


The Butterfly Effect

by morituritesalutant



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Magic, Childhood Trauma, Friends to Lovers, Love at First Sight, M/M, Magic Realism, POV Bucky Barnes, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sam has the ability to speak with birds, Superpowers, Synesthesia, Unreliable Narrator, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-08-16 03:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8084434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morituritesalutant/pseuds/morituritesalutant
Summary: Bucky is 16 years old and has been 'gifted' with the ability of hearing the truth behind people's lies. It has made him bitter, distrustful, alienated, traumatised. Most of all, he's getting sick of trying to hide it out of fear he'll be discovered. When a new student arrives that refuses to speak, he quickly becomes obsessed with becoming the stranger's friend, (but really, he wants more.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has been uploaded before, but it wasn't to my satisfaction and I deleted it. Now that winterfalcon is receiving the appreciation it deserves ;) I wanted to go back to it. The plot has completely been changed and it's longer now, separated in two parts.  
> Warning for panic attacks, which Bucky doesn't realise he has.  
> It's achronological in some parts.
> 
> It's a combination of 616 and the MCU, specifically Sam's background has been inspired by the comics.

The sky is low when James Buchanan Barnes changes.  
At the other side of the ocean a king is replaced by a queen in a country he once read about in a magazine, but it’s of no importance to Bucky: there’s a new kid in school.  
A young man that’s not so different from the other thousands cramped in the little cemented building.   
Angry, going through puberty and somedays thinking too much of themselves, while other days hating themselves entirely.

And before he came, Bucky was like them as well, but with the arrival of one Samuel Wilson on the first day of the new school year of a cold September he seizes to be simple.

Bucky’s waiting outside with Natasha and his heart starts beating like the wings of a hummingbird trapped in his ribcage.  
There’s someone behind him. The bones that drum inside him warn him that life will never be the same again.

He turns around.

Of course he turns around, Bucky isn’t one to resist temptation, but instead enjoys it fully.  
Natasha doesn’t notice the Stranger, but Bucky understands immediately that he’s different, that he is significant.

  
He experiences what some may call, _love at first sight,_ although it will take him a little while to admit it.  
He swears. Not exactly in his plans for this year.  
  
The Stranger looks at him directly and Bucky sees the truth.  
His existence is trembling, as though his DNA is going through a genetic change (which is impossible, he learned that last year in biology), a reversal to the person he could have been if life hadn't screwed him over so royally.  
A second chance.

A hummingbird heart and a fickle mind he can’t change, but no more lies, he promises the Stranger.  
The boy smiles broadly and beautifully and between the gap of his teeth a butterfly escapes.

Bucky blushes, he tries to follow it with his eyes, but it’s impossible. The butterfly is gone.  
Much like the magic trick Toro likes to play, with the cups and the ball, he cannot concentrate enough to see where the ball ends up, nor where the butterfly goes.

He has a 'concentration problem' he’s been told. He likes to think that he simply only concentrates on things that seem worth it.  
Novels where the hero dies horribly, the way his baby sister talks, the kick-ass graffiti behind Sharon’s house, long divisions, the lights of Manhattan in the fog and now: the smile of a Stranger.

Bucky can see he doesn’t smile often, like he’s forgotten how to do it.  
Bucky looks at the boy and thinks that no lies will escape between the gap of those teeth.   
It's encouraging, hopeful, the feeling settles low in his belly.

No lies, especially not the kind of lie Steve tells him when he says “everything is all right, Buck,” but his eyes are elsewhere and not quite the same blue anymore.  
Instead it’s the color of forget-me-nots- and Bucky feels the urge to swear _he won’t forget him, ever, they're best friends, right?_

But Bucky never replies and doesn't say a word of what he's thinking.   
Steve sometimes knows things before the rest of them do. Some kids ask him what he reads in their faces but Bucky doesn’t and probably never will.  
Not because he’s a coward, he certainly ain’t one, but because he knows how to pick his battles.

Nor the kind of lie Natalia sometimes says to him when he asks her about her family and she tells him "they’re all dead and it’s none of your fucking business" but what’s she’s really saying is that _it hurts too much_ and he wonders why she can’t just admit that.

No, when the Stranger smiles it shows the gap in his teeth and Bucky knows for sure no lies will escape.   
The Stranger has something different and something sad and very beautiful. Dark long lashes frame deep brown eyes. As colours come, it's spectacular. Bucky feels it in his fingertips, curling up his arms, into his lungs until he can only breathe auburn.  
It hurts. He’s so beautiful.  
  
Bucky's trying to keep his face neutral, otherwise Natasha isn’t going to let him hear the end of it. She’s already looking at him curiously.  
He's not glaring for once, he guesses that's pretty extraordinary.  
  
_Be cool, be cool, don't look at the Stranger's eyes too closely._  
  
“Hi,” Bucky starts and he feels that first words are maybe even more important than someone’s last words, especially when you’ve just met the love of your life and so he says, blushing,  
“I wasn’t sure you would arrive today, but I suppose it made sense since my eyes changed colour again.”

The Stranger stops smiling and licks his lips, preparing for the words to come out. He nods his head strangely, twice, like a tick, and he’s about to say something when his shoulders drops.  
He walks past Bucky as though none of it matters.  
The blushing red on Bucky’s cheeks turns to shame instead.

* * *

 

Bucky used to be known in the neighbourhood. He supposes he still is. Now they just have a word to indicate what he is.   
_Freak_ it was before, now it's  _enhanced individual, mutant_. Although most folks that have speculated about Bucky don’t say it too loudly, they don’t hate him enough to let him disappear.  
He pretends that’s something. **  
**

‘That Barnes kid‘ everyone calls him from Niall MacKenzie (you know, with the grey beard that MacKenzie had failed to dye to its original brown again and now had a sort of orange-y colour who smelled of a brewery) all the way to missus Langland upstairs who sleeps in bed with her cat while her husband takes the couch.  
  
  
For a community that fears the supernatural so much superstitions run high in Bushwick.  
  
Before Bucky turned six, he had heard every variation of: ‘That Barnes kid, don’t trust him, he's cursed.' 'Must have lost his soul at sea, you see.' 'No, he's a changeling with those coal black eyes of his.’

His eyes are brown now, and grey the day before Sam arrives and his lungs remain auburn.

So yeah, Bucky is known in the neighborhood, not for his mean right hook, which he personally believes should have been the reason, or his good looks and easy-going nature, but for something else entirely.  
  
It’s the reason he has detention every week until Sam’s arrival. 

He can hear people lie and he uses it against them.  
  
For the longest time he thought that everyone heard what people really thought, but not pointing it out was the polite thing to do.  
He didn't know better, he was just a kid. So for the longest time he didn't, but when thoughts of murder and hate enter a five year olds brain, it damages something.   
His mother had realised it first, blamed herself, although Bucky has long since then accepted that his life is an accumulation of dramatic irony.  
She made him swear to never tell anyone, _people would want to use him_ , she warned him, _take him._  
  
That he already knew by then, that people are mean and treacherous, untrustworthy, manipulative.  
He learned that the hard way, never able to shut the unwelcome thoughts off, drilling into his brain whether he wanted or not.  
But the question of lies is even more complicated, for sometimes they are a necessity of life. Sometimes they need to be told to protect people, when it's too hard to hear the bitter truth.  
Bucky did, always, could not escape it.  
  
And sometimes people think something is the truth, but it isn't, or they believe they are lying, while it's actually the truth.  
What then, is the lie? What then, is spoken true?  
  
Bucky didn't know, and as years passed, it became increasingly difficult for him to see the world as it really was: to differentiate between his own reality and how others saw it.  
His thoughts would get stuck, isolated in his own brain, he became unable to escape and break free until someone noticed and called him back from the abyss.  
Sometimes he would walk around for days being 'stuck' in his own mind until somebody realised something wasn't quite right with him.  
  
And then there was the blame, the moments he played over again and again in his mind, he spent hours imagining different scenarios. Should he have spoken out, but who would have believed him?  
Would that have prevented a murder, an assault?  
  
No one should force a child to play judge and executioner at the same time.  
  
People noticed of course, when those charcoal eyes looked at them, they knew they couldn't hide and treated him accordingly.   
That more than anything, changed something inside Bucky, that not a single person that he came across spoke to him with kindness and understanding. **  
  
** Nowadays he simply thinks, as superpowers go, it isn’t really a very cool one.  
Flying, that would be great, but then again, he supposes that if he grew two giant wings on his back one of those non-governmental organisations like AIM or SHIELD would be coming for him quick,  
maybe hearing people lie was better in that way.   
**  
** (Admittedly he had entertained the idea of becoming a detective for awhile, being a walking lie-detector seemed useful for that line of work, but by the time he was 12 Steve had given him a nice, solid hate for the NYPD.)  
  
In the end his gift results only in making him distrustful, provocative, pushing people's boundaries when he shouldn't. **  
**

Bucky has a lot of stones in his pockets and the world is one big house of glass.

* * *

From Steve, not Natasha surprisingly, he hears that the Stranger is called Samuel Thomas Wilson and moved from Harlem to Brooklyn. He lives just on the border of Brownsville and Bushwick, closer to the Bushwick-side and Bucky thanks whosever out there for that.  
Sam's got an older brother, who's still back in Harlem, and a sister named Sarah. They moved here because his father got jumped, trying to stop an enhanced one being taken by god knows who.   
This peaks Bucky’s interest more than anything.

Steve looks disapprovingly when Toro shares that last bit of information, it's too personal, and Bucky would normally too, but he’s desperate to know more about Sam.

  
"Sam," he repeats to Steve when they walk back, "that's a good name, beautiful even, don't ya think?"  
His friend looks at his strangely. "What?"  
"Nothing," Steve answers, _you’re weirdly happy_ , he really says and it’s a nice thought, so Bucky doesn’t mind the lie.

When they pass the parking-lot he suddenly sees the butterfly, resting on the back of a car. It’s a good omen.

* * *

Samuel Wilson and James Barnes share only one class together: history.

Normally a thing Bucky believes deserves his concentration, but with Sam so near, he can’t.  
He’s not exactly known for his multitasking skills.  
  
(Actually, he is, but one Samuel Wilson is too distracting.)  
  
When Sam enters the class, Bucky  tastes burnt saffron on his tongue.

 _Fuck_ , it's been less than half a day and Bucky’s so gone for this boy and cannot even feel ashamed about it.  
_I mean look at him,_ he says to himself.  
  
And you know what? Bucky talks enough for the both of them, even if it’s mostly in his head.

_They would balance each other out nicely,_ he thinks, but still, if Sam doesn’twant anything to do with him, he will back off.

He’s sure broken hearts don’t sell as good on the black market as happy ones, but he will give it a try and if he gets a rejection, no need for a heart anymore.  
And so he stands up, the teacher ignores him like always, and settles next to Sam and says, “look, if you want me to fuck off, I will, but if you don’t mind, I would like to sit next to you.”  
  
He isn’t sure what comes over him, but he hopes Sam won’t find him too odd. Although he's pretty sure that would be the least of his worries if Sam would ever find out that Bucky saw a butterfly coming out of his mouth foreboding the significance of this friendship-- if not more (Bucky can only hope).  
He decides not to mention the butterfly. In fact, not mention anything that he sees or thinks about on a daily basis, especially not how his thoughts get stuck, _no_ , especially not that.  
  
Although come to think of it, Sam's probably been warned about Bucky by other students, stay away from the hateful freak.  
But looking at Sam, trying not to get lost in his mind, Bucky feels the other is kind, and that’s worth something.  
  
And so his mind rambles on as he watches Sam’s response in silence.  
Sam doesn’t speak much. In fact, he doesn’t speak at all, Bucky will realise after two days.  (He will also realise that when his initial idea that Sam would never lie to him because of his honest nature was probably wrong, it's more likely Sam will never lie to him because Sam doesn't speak, a word, ever.)  
  
Sam firmly nods ‘no’ after a minute of terrifying silence. Bucky's heart drops, but he seems to have interpreted Sam the wrong way, who shuffles a little to the side, making space for Bucky to sit.  
  
Bucky sits down immediately, afraid that the offer might be taken back again and places his book in the middle of the broad table to share.  
Sam shoots him a smile, not that toothy-showing-the-gap-gorgeous smile, but a small grateful one and Bucky’s heart turns a dark purple and he can hear the hummingbird wings of his heart in his ears.  
  


* * *

 

Before high school Bucky would have periods of intense interests. For a month long he would read anything he could find on Genghis Khan or the Great Depression and then, the same sudden way it had come, he would lose his interest.  
Of course he remembered everything, but his passion slipped away like a thief in the night.  
  
He used to call them his “fits." He doesn’t have them as often anymore. Steve blames the educational system that “deprives them of all creativity and inspiration through standard testing.”  
Bucky’s pretty sure it’s puberty that has made him lazy, he learned that too during another fit of his on 'the development of the teenage mind and body.'  
  
Steve is also the one that says two weeks after Bucky first met Sam, “Sam isn’t one of your fits, is he?”  
It's during their shared break and they are sitting together on one of the cemented benches.  
He says it carefully, trying not to provoke Bucky.

It doesn’t work, Bucky feels defensive anyway, “of course not, I-"  
He tries to find an answer, but he can't. Is Sam one of his fits? He doesn't want him to be, but has he any control over it?  
"I-I-I-" his mind is slipping again, questioning himself without realising he can learn, he can improve, he's not stuck in a vacuum of bad mistakes. But his mind is drifting already.  
**  
**  
“Buck…” Steve starts, sounding apologetic.

“I’m sorry.” Bucky says softly, barely breathing out the words.

“It's not your fault," Steve says, but Bucky wants to scream _it is_ , no one is doing it to him, nobody fucked with his brain, he did that all himself.  
Bucky forces himself to push through, it hurts, but it's important to get his words out.

“I swear he’s not," Bucky answers after 10 minutes of semi-hyperventilation. He tastes saffron again, it gives him courage.  
"I don’t know," he adds, 'it’s weird, we don’t actually talk, but we kinda do, and he’s really funny and he looks through all of my bullshit, but he doesn't mind when I get stuck and--” Bucky stops before he starts to ramble, "I like him," he finishes awkwardly.  
His mind continues, but Steve doesn’t need to know that. He admits to himself that he's a little obsessed with why Sam's so quiet, Steve doesn’t need to know that either.

Steve looks reassured enough.

“Well, I suppose I was one of your fits and you kept me around,” he says to Bucky, who after so many years still turns red when remembering how he used to follow Steve around, combination of a lost puppy and a dog-fighting trained rottweiler.

 

* * *

  
Bucky continues to share his history-book with Sam, even though he has gotten his own by then.

They share a lot of things, pens and lunch and quiet hurt that neither of them talks about.  
  
They do their homework in silence together in the library that’s two streets behind the school.  
Not exactly in silence, for somehow they’re talking.  
  
With one look Bucky knows Sam’s saying _you fucking with me Barnes?_  and which a shrug of his shoulders he replies _whatever you say, Wilson._

It makes Bucky way too proud and happy about that they have that together. He doesn't want to share this with anyone. Sam sees right through that too and mocks him over it.  
But he doesn't push too much, instead his teasing makes Bucky more comfortable with his feelings, makes him less awkward about it.  
He teases Sam back, but Sam rarely gets caught off guard. _Are you sure_ , he seems to say, _you want to play that game, you don't know what you're in for.  
_  
_Oh really?_  
  
_Yeah, really Barnes,_ Sam grins.  
  
Bucky doesn't understand how Sam does it, how he knows, but it makes him want to hug the other boy so badly, so tightly. But he doesn't.  
  
(He doesn't understand yet that in many ways he does the same for Sam, who's lonely life full of quiet cries of desperation has been taken over by a force of nature named James Barnes.)

Sometimes Bucky gets stuck in his thoughts and Sam lets him be, doesn’t try to force him out of it, just keeps talking in their language.   
Bucky doesn't tell him that lately the thoughts have been better, the drifts are shorter and when he comes back, it's because he smells the soap that Sam's mother uses for laundry and the oranges Sam peels during lunch.  
His drifts don’t scare him so much anymore.

Sam turns out to be really funny. Bucky isn't surprised at all, but he's amazed how Sam does it without muttering a word.  
They joke about things teenage boys joke about, which tends to be feces related, and they laugh a lot.  
Sam seems to be the only one in the world that isn't impressed by Bucky's glaring. 

And Bucky wants to say, _whatever made you stop talking, I’m here for you._

He knows Sam isn’t mute, he talks to pigeons for instance, except he calls them doves.  
Sam steadies him and makes him kinder, but he feels it's out of balance if he can’t do the same for him, he’s a lousy ego-centrical friend.  
Sam deserves more, Sam deserves the world.  
  
_I hear lies, I see what people hide, I catch butterflies,_ h e wants to tell Sam so badly and he doesn’t know why.  
  
He’s never told anyone, not even Steve, his best friend, only his ma who forbade him to ever speak of it again, who had cried when she found out and said "we’ll solve this," but she really said was: _this will be the death of him, my poor boy.  
_ She thinks it's her fault because a nursery song  she used to sing, one of those creepy ones that no one understands the meaning off.  
_'oh darling, is it too late to say, that I love you far beyond today, but the words were said and I cannot take them back,  now I can see your lies, what you hide, but all I catch is those butterflies.'_

  
Occasionally they eat pizza in an abandoned diner that has a white-eyed waitress you’re not allowed  to talk to and every day they walk back together as long as possible, moving across and back over the border of Brownsville and Bushwick until they need to go their separate ways.

But before he has time to get lost in his own mind once again about whether he should tell Sam, Sam looks to him as though he’s heard everything and squeezes his hand.  
They stop before the alley that is the navel of the distance between their houses. 

“I got your back,”  Bucky says out loud. He doesn't remember what they were talking about, but he feels it's important.  
  
It’s a back-alley promise which means he’s gonna keep it. 

 _Sap,_ Sam's eyes say in response, making fun of him, but when Bucky looks over his shoulder when Sam crosses the street, Sam is clouded in a bright yellow and both of them smile for the rest of the day.   

* * *

 

His mothers tells him, sometime later, that Sam is angry with the world.  
"Steve is too," Bucky argues, "yet he never shuts up."   
  
“Sam’s a different kind of angry, and rightfully so.  The world has hurt him and silenced him.”

  
He wonders what trauma made Sam quiet, or if simply no one listened, or both. Or maybe he does it to punish himself, like Bucky does.  
  


* * *

 

When he was seven Bucky had an extreme obsession with death. This was before he started to call them fits.  
Well, perhaps it wasn’t exactly death, more fatalism: chaos theory to be exact.

The lady upstairs, missus Langland, brought it on.  
She used to sell love potions for a living but everyone knew they didn't work, although she did make a mean lentil soup.  
  
She had crossed herself upon seeing him one day as they met on the stair-case and he could hear her whisper to her cat, that she brought everywhere,   
“that Barnes kid, oh how I recognise those eyes.  Exactly like the ones that visit me at night when I send him away because it ain’t my time.”

That was the day that Bucky learned that one was able to send death away if you didn’t want to die yet.  
  
("Knowledge that will come in handy one day," Steve will say some time in the future with that same forget-me-not smile.)

It was also the day that Bucky’s coal eyes became blue and he saw his first monarch-butterfly.  
  


As most kids experience at least once in their lives, Bucky played with the idea that maybe his parents weren’t his actual parents (which was complete nonsense, because he got his crooked teeth from his dad’s side and the same nose’s as his mothers’ mom.)

He even went as far to believe Death might have sired him. To meet his dad, or mom, (did Death have a gender?) he tried to come as close to them as possible by executing extremely dangerous acts that he believed brought him on the verge of dying, but just made him end up bruised, battered and disappointed.  
He broke his arm during one of his experiments, but didn't tell anyone. It healed weirdly, with a large scar and he can't quite lift it properly anymore, no one has found out yet.

When Steve’s mom caught him on top of their building walking a little closely to the ridge, she had pulled him back, hugged him tightly and said, “be happy death isn’t your parent, otherwise you would be a ghost, stuck in between life and death.”

Right then Bucky hadn’t understood how important that was. He doesn’t have time to regret it later, when he meets Sam and finally understands.  
He should have known, because after Sarah Rogers told him, the butterfly appeared, warning him for the importance of the moment he had just witnessed.  
  
He was a child, how could he have known?

* * *

 

“How’s the butterfly boy?” his mother asks him six weeks after meeting Sam.  
“Still sad,” Bucky answers. August’ heath lingers in Oktober as he hangs over the seat with his long limbs everywhere, he’s currently going through another grow spurt.  
  
He looks like a newborn foal and he has to admit they’re really cute as horses go, but baby-animal-adorable isn’t exactly the look Bucky has been going for.  
  
He wonders what Sam thinks of him, does he like Bucky’s hair long? Does he like Bucky's legs long?  
That's probably a weird question to ask.  
  
He needs to cut his hair for sure, he tries to sweep it to the side with a head-toss. He thinks that it looks pretty cool that way. He practices another sweep.

“You’re going to do anything about it?” Winifred Barnes continues.

He thinks about briefly.

“You think the Botanic Gardens are open tomorrow?”  
  


* * *

 

Sam and Steve are slowly becoming best friends. It’s not like Bucky expected any different, they’re very much a like, but he’s jealous nonetheless.  
Both of Sam and of Steve. (He doesn't quite get that he can have both.)

There's an ache deep down in his stomach that tastes awful, he walks around surrounded by a dark red cloud for days.  
He's lonely.

Natasha has been hanging out with Sharon and Bucky's pretty sure 'hanging out' just means making out behind the bleachers.

He’s got Toro, but he’s started smoking and talking in a way that shows he's trying to pretend he’s an actual adult now, which sorta annoys Bucky most of the time.   
He hopes he will never go through that faze. (In a year he will read ‘Catcher in the Rye’ and he will be worse than Toro for two long suffering years.)

But it's also the same time Sam starts to talk to them. _Maybe it's because of Steve,_ Bucky thinks, but he regrets it immediately, Sam's voice is not a competition and Bucky has to unlearn how to be so hurtful. It's become natural.  
  
Sam starts of with hums and yesses, until it becomes words and sentences.  
  
The first time he says something it’s so casual Bucky barely notices it.  
He’s become used to their quiet conversations that’s it’s not so different from hearing Sam actually speak.  
  
“Sure, Barnes,” he says when Bucky is boasting about something he probably didn’t do (it was more likely Steve who did it) and it takes him a whole two minutes before he realises Sam said it out loud.  
  
Of course the logical response then becomes, “you got a beautiful voice,” and to hide his embarrassment he quickly adds “Wilson” but the damage is done, Sam’s grin is telling him that he’s going to hear about this a lot more times. He sputters and tries to salvage the unsalvageable.

“Uh, uh. Keep digging yourself deeper, Barnes,” Sam smiles.   
  


* * *

   
  
"I see now what you saw." Natasha comments out of the blue.  
  
"Wait, what?" Bucky replies, "I mean, I like being right about something, but _what_  are you talking about?"  
  
"Well, about Sam, because besides you and your..." she gestures in the air trying to indicate the enormity Bucky's original interest in Sam,  
"none of us really got why you liked Sam so much, what was so interesting about him."  
  
"The only thing I used to see him do was make rude gestures to people that tried talking to him." Natasha laughs.  
"I guess you had that in common," she laughs again, before returning to her serious manner of before.  
"But you were the only one who noticed, that he was stuck in this limbo of life and dead, crying out for help, and you listened, and you pulled him out."  
  
Somewhere, hidden away, it reminds him of what Steve's mother once said to him. He can't quite remember.  
  
Bucky waits patiently. Natasha has a neck for understanding people, he's curious about what brought this on.   
"I feel ashamed, that I didn't notice that about him," she admits and swallows down whatever else she was about to share.  
  
Bucky rarely sees her this honest so he doesn't push.  
"So yeah, now I get it, the appeal, attraction. He's... something else."  
  
She doesn't finish her sentence, she simply smiles and Bucky agrees, Sam is indeed quite something else.  
He forgets to ask her what brought it on.  
**  
  
**

* * *

 

“He’s got a pet falcon, of course he has a pet falcon, christ!” Bucky’s voice is hysterical. He’s got a bloody nose and his hair is too long, Steve is probably sporting a black eye or two.  
  
God knows the reason they got into a fight, but God knows Sam and his falcon are the reason they made it out without any broken bones.  
From then on Steve and Bucky will go nowhere without Sam.  
People start referring to their group with 'the three musketeers' and for the first time, Bucky isn't known anymore for being 'that Barnes kid.'

  
Later after that first introduction to Sam's pet falcon, Bucky asks Sam how he's able to control Redwing so well. Sam tells him in a combination of spoken words and their silent language, it takes a long time.  
  
"So you can talk to birds," Bucky concludes.   
  
_It’s called avian telepathy, idiot,_  Sam responds.   
And Bucky wants to say “I hear lies, I see what people hide, I catch butterflies,” but he doesn’t. "You can speak to birds," Bucky repeats in awe and Sam grins before he tackles Bucky to the ground.  
  
They roll around, struggling to get the other to submit. Sam tickles him while Bucky shouts, _bird boy!,_ until he yields because he can't breathe, because laughter and Sam's smile has taken the air out of his lungs.  
Sam's face is close to his, too close almost. Bucky breathes in deeply, desperate for air, and now the auburn spreads everywhere, he's so warm, so nervous.  
His eyes wander to Sam's lips. Kissing him would be so easy, he moves forward slowly.  
But Sam pulls back, and the saffron turns bitter.  
  
He understands, honestly, he does, ever since Natasha asked him about their friendship, he's been wondering, wandering, why Sam returned his interest that first day during history class.  
Bucky doesn't have a lot to offer besides a long list of mental issues.  
  
_No worries about it_ , he says, and he realises it's the first time he's lied to Sam.

 

* * *

  
“I’m not going to like this am I?” Sam asks, but Bucky can hear in his voice he’s already agreed to come along and Sam is not like Steve at all. Sam is laughing and cursing simultaneously about what kind of trouble they are going to find him, while Steve is actually planning more trouble.

Bucky's more of a 'rush in and get captured' kinda guy.

It’s not until later that day that Bucky realises it’s not because Sam is that different from them in character, it’s that consequences will always be harder for him.

He tries to be more careful after that, until Sam calls him out on it, _I can take care of myself,_ and Sam’s right, but he doesn’t have to, although Bucky supposes he went a little overboard and they go back to normal.  
  


* * *

 

There are questions Sam doesn’t answer at first, but one day soon whispers them silently between the sheets.

"You wanna come over on Sunday?" Bucky asks and Sam nods _no_.  
  
"You can’t?" Bucky guesses and he gets a _yes_ this same. "Your folk religious or something?"  
  
_Something like that._

"What made you stop talking?"

_It was like I was just there to watch.  
  
_

* * *

 

"When you don’t know how to cheer someone up, show them something that makes you happy."  
That's what Bucky's mom always says to him, so he had taken Sam to the butterfly house in Brooklyn’s Botanic Gardens.  
  
He had shown Sam the different kinds, his favorite one,  shared his knowledge and he had bared his soul in many ways.  
He asked the butterflies, that had always aided him, if they could maybe help Sam this time around.

He had quietly shared with Sam that he sometimes imagined what it would be like to be a gardener, work here, not leave the city, but be surrounded by nature all day long. That it might make him _happy_ , a word he's almost forgotten exists.  
_Social worker,_ Sam had shared in return, _I want to go back to Harlem and do what's right, set things right,_ and it's the first proper thing Bucky has learnt about Sam and his dreams.  
  
"I think you would be great at it," Bucky replied, "as long as you come visit me here in Brooklyn sometime."  
  
Sam had chuckled, _well, gotta get myself in order first.  
  
_ "Don't we all."  
Sam had softly touched his left arm, fingers brushing over Bucky's scar in appreciation. It's the two of them against the world.  
  
_What’s with the butterflies, Barnes?_ Sam had asked him, changing the topic.   
  
Bucky had carefully weighted his answer.  
He had read somewhere that falcons sometimes eat butterflies.

Intelligent brown eyes demand an answer, but it should be a good one, a real one, an honest one.  
Sam speaks so little, so when he asks something, it’s important.  
  
“They help me know what's real and what's not.” Bucky answers after some thought.   
  
He sees it in the fluttering of Sam's eyelashes when he closes them, the memory of the first day, the way he moves.   
  
"Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect?" 

  
\--

One late night while the Barnes family are all in bed, Bucky is waiting restlessly. His hummingbird heart is thrumming, he knows he needs to stay awake for some reason.  
The reason arrives shortly in a form on a message on his cellphone.  
  
_You in?_ it reads. Sam rarely messages him, but when he does, it’s because he needs an immediate answer that can’t wait.  
Bucky calls him, so it won’t cost Sam another text-message to answer. He never has enough money on his phone.

“Yes, I’m in.” Bucky says and regrets calling immediately because it forces Sam to speak to him.

"Oh shit, I forgot calling requires speaking,” and he hears Sam snort at the other side.

“Let me in too?” He whispers and Bucky runs downstairs before he can finish the question.

Outside the rain has stopped, but Sam looks like a drowned cat.

“Let’s get you warm, Wilson,” Bucky says and he helps him up the stairs.  
  
Sam is leaning heavily, heavenly, on him. Physically he seems fine to Bucky’s relief, but he appears sadder than Bucky has ever seen him before.  
  
"We gotta be quiet," Bucky warns as they move slowly into his room.  
Bucky goes briefly into the bathroom, before returning and handling Sam a towel.  
He searches through his dresser for a pair of pyjamas and turns around.  
  
He thoughts get stuck like they have never before, in the best way possible.  
  
Sam's practically naked, his well defied arms and his lean chest take makes Bucky's breath stammer. His skin is everywhere. A fire lights inside Bucky, as he stares shamelessly.  
  
_Bucky?_ Sam asks.  
  
Bucky looks up, the vulnerability on Sam's face is almost too much, it breaks sometimes inside him.  
He wants to say, _you're beautiful_ , like he had said when he had first heard Sam's voice, but he's pretty sure when you're 16 and see the boy you've been in love with (he has stopped denying that some time ago) naked for the first time, it's not what you're supposed to do, you're supposed to play it cool.  
  
He smiles, and moves closer to Sam, who looks at him in surprise, like Bucky still doesn't get it.  
  
_Get what?_ he asks Sam quietly. _  
  
Look up, Barnes, look up._  
  
Bucky looks up then, what his eyes had missed, distracted by his attraction to Sam, hidden by the night-time shadows.  
  
  
_Oh._  
  
High above Sam, growing out his shoulders, are two most beautifully brown coloured wings.  
  
  
_Wings.  
  
  
_Oh.__  
  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With regards to Bucky's 'powers', in essence he's an empath, but one without training, thus resulting in the fact that his synesthesia and his ability to detect lies have manifested most strongly. I'm sure he's capable of much more.  
> Sam's abilities are very close to what he can do in the comics.
> 
> Both Sam and Bucky suffered (and suffer) from PTSD, which is one of the reasons Bucky gets stuck in his mind, lashes out, has 'concentration problem's' while Sam's trauma resulted in muteness, fear, depression, self-blame and hate, and more (spoilers part 2).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one thesis-defense, one graduation ceremony, 2 full time jobs and over 12.000 words later, here's part 2!  
> thank you for all the lovely comments! <3  
> it made a third chapter (instead of the initial two) fall from the sky.... ;)  
> warnings  
> \+ in a way this story does follow Bucky's winter soldier storyline (as been hinted to in part 1), we don't read about it, but it's strongly hinted to in part 3 and that obviously comes with its own heartbreak/warnings and semi-happy ending.  
> +some internalized hate/ableism on Bucky's side.  
> +since they haven't discussed Bucky's empath ability yet, they aren't fully aware of the effect they have on each other. Sam understands that Bucky knows what he can feel and they fully consent to that when they touch each other, but Bucky is unaware that it's part of his empathy-power.

Bucky had always known there were other ‘enhanced’ ones out there.   
He had heard it in the lies people whispered and he had heard in the casual truth of Sam’s admission that he could speak to birds.  
But never had he quite envisioned it like this. Something so beautiful, so visible.

For a brief moment, Bucky wonders _how the hell_ Sam has been hiding those, but the sight of Sam’s wings makes Bucky’s mind flow.   
It feels like he’s been lifted off the floor and maybe he is, he doesn’t dare look down.  
  
Bucky’s eyes trail over Sam’s shoulders, to his tendons, and he gets lost in the dark and lighter brown colours intertwining over the span of Sam’s wings, the colours moving straight into Bucky’s veins.

Bucky stares in absolute fascination, which is rude, he knows, but he can’t help it.   
Sam is gorgeous and he wants to be closer. But he doesn’t have the slightest idea how to go about that.  
He doesn't have any experience with this, at all, and Sam makes him even less composed than he normally is, which he isn’t very much to begin with.  
  
So he waits, tries to ask quietly, _May I?_ Not sure what he’s asking for. But Sam’s returning gaze lightens his deep auburn blood to red again.

Sam, who came here for a reason and was courageous enough to show him his beautiful brown burning wings, looks at him with fear in his eyes.

His jaw is firm, his body tense, as though he’s ready to make a run for it.   
He turns his head to the side, away from Bucky’s questioning eyes.  
And while he looks away, pieces of Sam’s broken heart fling into Bucky’s like shatters of glass. They are deep and smooth and it hurts, it hurts so much.  
A broken sound escapes Bucky, a sound Sam should have made, but never does. Sam's head twitches up, twice, in reflex, eyes big and wide.  
The feeling fades slowly, red turns to brown once more.

There remains so much that Bucky doesn’t know about Sam.  
  
It’s in that tiny room, up Cyprus avenue where the humidity never quite leaves, that Bucky wants to say it. He wants to say it so badly he can taste what he feels like on his tongue.

He doesn’t think first love is supposed to feel like this. Or maybe it does for everyone and that is why people speak about it with mockery and melancholia, but he knows deep down that this is _it_  and sees it reflected in Sam's wingspan and the pain on Sam’s face while he tries to stay strong. Bucky knows.  
He knows it in the way that Sam jokes and mocks Bucky, in the way he is gentle and caring. Bucky knows there will never be quite someone like Sam again in his life.  
  
The idea that they might not be together in the future terrifies Bucky. So he wants to say it, confess that deep yearning inside him, that has been there since the first day, but has grown stronger as time passed by.  
But he’s so scared of rejection after a lifetime of abuse that he ends up swallowing those three words as he has so often before.

He thinks maybe Sam knows, because the other boy's frown turns to a smile, a light blush on his cheeks.

“Left you speechless, huh?”  
  
And with that the tension has been broken. Bucky shrugs, trying to be casual, but his big grin betrays him: there’s no point in denying it.

Bucky steps closer, slowly, floating, to Sam and hugs him tightly, he wraps with his dangly arms awkwardly around the other boy.  
Sam freezes up in surprise. Bucky doesn’t know whether Sam’s shocked that Bucky is hugging him because of the wings or because Bucky never touches anyone.  
But there was never a need to worry, Sam slumps into it and sighs deeply.   
  
Sam’s very warm, heat is radiating out of his bones and into Bucky's, it moves something in the empty fault of Bucky’s heart.

Bucky’s hands brush briefly over the beginnings of Sam’s wings. They are very soft and it shoots a thrill through Bucky’s stomach.

“Thank you,” Sam says and Bucky doesn’t know what for, so he embraces Sam tighter.

 

* * *

 

The truth is—as Bucky is slowly getting into the habit of telling the truth, he likes to start all his sentences with those words nowadays. It annoys everyone except Natasha— the truth is, Bucky doesn’t touch people.

He thinks maybe in another lifetime he would have been tactile, but in this one, he isn’t.  


His mother hugs him occasionally, but it’s always carefully, as though he might break. His father smiles and grabs him by the shoulder, but never more than that.  
  
Bucky doesn’t even touch Steve and never has, although he wants to, a lot of the time.  
When he was younger, Bucky would stare at Steve and imagine what it would be like, just to swing his arm around his friend.  
Steve, who of all people, deserves the affection that he is denied so often. But Bucky doesn’t and never has.  
Steve doesn’t push him either. Perhaps he has his own reasons for not touching Bucky.  
Both of them carry a lot of secrets, that they don’t share in a strange belief they’re protecting each other.  
  
So yes, the truth is, Bucky doesn’t touch people, and people don’t touch him.

  
Sam had noticed, of course he had, and asked him about it two weeks after they met.

Bucky had explained that when he was a child, people were convinced he had some curse put on him. So touching him would bring bad luck.  
Later, people thought worse.  
  
And in a way they were right, for through touch Bucky felt the lies behind their words and actions more strongly, more intensely and what he felt would come spilling out immediately.  
_That Barnes kid knows strange things,_ they would say, _but not of it true of course._  
So they had avoided touching him and he had stopped trying to reach out, if only so he could escape the feeling of someone else’s emotions inside him.  
  
He hadn’t quite told Sam that. He didn’t want Sam to think he was walking around with an actual curse.  
  
_That’s fucked up_ , Sam had commented and Bucky had shrugged, trying to hide his emotions behind a cocky grin.  
Sam had looked at him, surprised and a little bit angry. _Dude, I’m serious, that’s fucked up._  
  
  
Nobody had ever said that so openly before to Bucky. They had pitied him mostly.  
His other friends had silently accepted his boundaries, but nobody had actually said anything about anything.  
The untouchable topic of Bucky’s untouchability.

  
“Yeah,” Bucky had agreed quietly, “it is.”

Sam had trailed his finger over Bucky’s left arm scar then, maybe to show Bucky he wasn’t afraid of an old lady’s tale of the evil eye.  
  
But the moment Sam touched Bucky, instead of the horrid feeling of deception, he only felt Sam’s honesty and kindness.  
Bucky had sucked in the air, his head light, he felt like he would come close to fainting if Sam kept touching him. But he had kept still instead, hoping the moment would never end.  
  
_That okay?_

 _Yeah,_ Bucky nodded, _yeah, that’s good._  
  
After that day, their hands had occasionally brushed. Sam had often taken the initiative, but the touches were always small.  
And every time the touch had made Bucky feel the same as the first time, light-headed and a little turned on.  
It made him wonder what would happen if Sam touched him anywhere else, if Sam would touch him properly.

* * *

 

It suffices to say that actually touching Sam is indescribable. It's overwhelming, yes, but it's so much more. It's the burning feeling Bucky gets when he swims deep under water for too long and just when he thinks he won't be able to breathe anymore, he pushes himself up above the water. Air fills his lungs, burning inside while the icy cold water surrounds him.   
Bucky  tries to wet his lips with his tongue, but his throat is too dry. He can feel Sam's breath on his face, cooling him and it makes Bucky shiver all over.  
His knees buckle and he's only kept in place because Sam holding him just as much as Bucky is holding Sam.

Bucky squeezes tighter, his cheek pressed to Sam’s. He can't resist to rub his nose against Sam’s neck, he just smells so good.  
Bucky could get lost in this feeling for the rest of his life. His mind is drifting on a deep ocher cloud that smells like Sam's laundry and shampoo.  
On fire and at home at the same time.

“Are you sniffing me?” Sam whispers and there’s a light giggle in his voice.  
  
“Maybe,” Bucky mumbles. The situation is so bizarre, and _yes_ , he’s sniffing Sam. He can't help but start giggling too.  
They stand for a little while like that, softly giggling, whispering, holding onto each other. (And maybe some more sniffling as well, nobody would know).  
  
When they pull back, Bucky feels strange.  
The real world is back and the intimacy of before is gone again. Sam looks at him, his large brown eyes so overwhelming too much for Bucky, so beautiful. Bucky cannot compare to that.  
He's back to his awkward self.  
  
_You can stay,_ Sam, says, understanding well what's going through Bucky, but Bucky is already shuffling backwards, excusing himself, waving vaguely in the air, _to whom? Jesus Christ,_ sneaks away quickly, back to the bathroom.

 

* * *

 

He's relatively calm considering the circumstances. Calm meaning he's not hyperventilating yet.  
But actually, the truth is, Bucky’s freaking out. It’s 3 am and he’s freaking out in the tiny bathroom next to his parents’ bedroom.  
  
He didn’t only see the boy he’s been in love with since day one semi-naked. Bucky saw him naked with wings, really fucking gorgeous wings, and then they touched.  
Longer than Bucky has touched anyone before, mixed in with particular smell of _Sam._ Sam holding him tightly, with his nice strong arms—  
  
So yeah, maybe that had an effect on his ‘physique.'  
  
He knows it's normal, only natural. In fact he’s gotten hard often before simply by looking at Sam, also normal according to his 'the development of the teenage mind and body-fit' and practically being surrounded by boys the whole day long, so he knows he isn’t the only one.

But now he’s about to potentially share his bed with this gorgeous boy and how the hell is he going to do this?  
  
He thinks about rubbing one out, but he can’t do that right?  
Would Sam notice? Sam would definitely notice. But would he mind? _Fuck_.  
  
And he can’t stay in the bathroom too long or otherwise Sam will think that he’s freaking out about the wings, which he is, but not in the way Sam might fear he would.  
He looks at himself in the mirror. Steve had tried to teach him a few tricks a few weeks ago, to ground himself. To get less confused about what's real and what's not real.  
How to be sure that he exists, how to calm down again. How to keep his mind from slipping away.  
  
So he stares in the mirror and tries to start with his toes and work his way up, assessing how he feels, tracing his own respiration with his eyes in the mirror.  
In and out, slowly, until he feels steady.  
  
It helps, a little and the reminder that Sam waits for him urges him on.  
  
Sam must have already changed by now. Waiting for Bucky alone, after having just bared his heart. If anyone has the right to freak out, it's Sam.  
So Bucky pulls his shirt down, to hide his bulge  — it doesn’t work, like, at all— and returns to his room slowly.  
  
He counts his steps as he moves through the hallway to his room and he doesn't hesitate when he turns his doorknob.  
  
Sam’s sitting on the edge of Bucky’s bed, wearing one of Bucky’s sweaters, wings tucked away once more.  
He looks up, the relief of before is nowhere to be found on his face. Bucky flinches, he did that, by acting selfishly.  
Sam's sharp jawline shows that the sharp edges of his broken heart are back and suddenly Bucky’s ‘problem’ suddenly doesn’t seem like such a _big_ issue anymore.

“Hey,” Bucky says for lack of better words, standing in the doorframe, suddenly hesitant again.  
He approaches the bed slowly, giving Sam time to tell Bucky not to come closer and when he doesn’t, Bucky settles closely next to him.  
Their thighs rub against each other.  
  
He offers his hand, palm open to the sky, a universal sign of peace, and Sam grabs it like a lifeline.  
Emotions come flooding in like a tsunami and Bucky can taste the sea in his mouth. Salty and eternal.  
Perhaps it’s Sam's unshed tears.  
  
Sam turns to him and pushes his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck.  
As though he might find his peace there, folded against Bucky, the heartbeat in Bucky's throat the only sound that matters.  
  
“Everything is going to hell,” Sam confesses, the words coming out slowly, with difficulty.  
  
Bucky can hear the tears in his voice this time.  
  
“I fucked up,” Sam pushes the words out, his voice straining. It's only thanks to their proximity that Bucky understands him.  
“It’s bad, it’s so bad.”

The seal of of Sam’s silence breaks that night and Bucky will slowly understand why Sam stopped speaking.  
For what Sam carries inside him, would break someone less strong and kind. 

Sam cries a lot that night. Everything that's been hold up by him, closed off by him, for so long by him, comes out.  
Bucky wants to replace the sorrow Sam feels with his love. He thinks for a few brief moments that he does. The moments when Sam stops crying and breathes against his shoulder, in deep gasps and whispers words into his skin that Bucky cannot make out.

Words flood out and Bucky listens, he listens with everything he has.

In between the sheets he hears Sam’s story in bits and pieces.   
They lay face to face, Sam’s breath on Bucky’s face.  
  
Bucky’s twinbed is too small for them, but he can intertwine his skinny legs with Sam’s and he’s never been this warm before.

 _It was like I was just there to watch,_ Sam starts.   
  
_It was Rhodey this time.  
  
It was my fault.  
  
It always is._

 _It was my fault and before Rhodey it was my father, and Riley, shot out of the sky while I just stayed and watched._  
  
Sam starts his story by telling him about Riley, the two of them unlikely childhood friends bound together by their parents' friendship,  
Their parents had met every up almost every week and the two boys had quickly grown closer.  
As they had grown older, they had understood that their parents knew each other _because_ of them, for they were two families with two winged children.  
  
It had given Sam's father the idea to set up a support system for parents, families and individuals with enhanced abilities through his church.  
In Harlem the density of enhanced children was large and there were many families in dire need of help that did not exist at the time. Only the church offered it, no questions asked.  
  
But almost two years ago, everything broke. It wasn't a particular rememberable day except for what would come pass.  
Him and Riley were outside on one of the rooftops that was enclosed by other buildings. It was a hot summer day, humid and heavy as summers in New York always are.  
  
They had taken their shirts off. Of course they had been told a hundred times not to do it, but it felt so good, and they had each others back,  right?   
They always had each others back. They promised not to fly that day, out of fear that someone might catch them. And so they hadn't.  
And still, still, life wasn't on their side that day.  
  
Someone had spotted them, snitched on them and within a few hours AIM had shown up. Late afternoon sun disappeared behind the horizon as Sam was marked for life.  
The memory is chrystal clear in Sam's mind, but to Bucky he tells of of it in bits and pieces.  
Sam had been in his room upstairs. He had parted with Riley just minutes earlier.  
He had heard the shouts before he had seen a thing. He had run to the window.  
Outside Riley and his father were surrounded by men dressed in paramilitary uniforms.  
  
They must have met on the street before the Wilson's house as they were both on their way to their homes.   
  
Riley had tried to run, not thinking. Sam isn't sure if that would have made a difference anyway.  
His wings, much larger than Sam's, had spread quickly and with strong beats he had arisen from the ground.  
For a brief moment Sam thought he would make it.   
  
One of the men turned his weapon to the sky, _better a dead freak than an escaped one_ , everyone knew this, but when faced with fight of flight, one doesn't remember that shared knowledge.  
His father had tried to stop them, loving Riley as much as his own son. Two shots were fired.  
  
Sam had stood frozen. His Riley fell out of the sky, his father fell on the pavement.  
  
He had been the sole witness of what had happened. But when he opened his mouth, people had closed their ears, their minds.  
He hadn't understood why, but when no one listens, it's hard to keep speaking.

Bucky tries to argue that none of that was his fault, but the guilt is deep and has grown as silence had settled over Sam. So now it cuts like a knife that words cannot soften.  
  
_Now Rhodey._ A shot meant for him. _Now Rhodey._  
Sam whispers that name a thousand times until his voice is raw from overuse.  
  
Sam doesn’t tell Bucky more, about who Rhodey is, what happened today, but Bucky can guess.

 _Please don’t fall,_ Sam whispers to him and Bucky knows he can’t promise that, but he does it anyway. _I won’t,_ Bucky says, but he will. 

* * *

 

 _ Dear Bucky, _   
  
_Dread and fear filled up my soul, as sorrow now threatens to swallow me whole_  
_Again I_ _saw and didn’t do a thing, when I should have been the one flying, catching, him  
Cursed are the cowards that don’t speak up when they claim they give a fuck_  
_I am the one witness and for that I shall never find forgiveness_  
_I shall be bound to silence for my silent-crime, as the guilty are marked for a lifetime_

* * *

 

Like Bucky, the shadows have listened too and pity the young boys in their solitude. They shape themselves around the two of them, showing the boys they will be protected this night.  


With Bucky facing him, Sam slowly falls asleep.

Love at first sight has become something else, something more profound. Every fiber of Bucky’s being is humming and buzzing. It feels like he might explode into a thousand butterflies, surpassing the laws of physics with the sight of Sam's closed eye-lids.  
  
With that thought he falls asleep eventually. He doesn't surpass the laws of physics that night. But something is surpassed for sure.

Sam wakes him up before dawn when he stumbles out of bed. Bucky misses his warmth immediately.  
Sam's movements are drowsy and slow and he allows Bucky to watch from the bed as Sam undresses and changes back into his now dried clothes.  
It’s nothing sexual, but an exchange of trust and acceptance.

“Thank you, Buck,” Sam says and if the use of his nickname by Sam for the very first time wasn’t enough to take Bucky by complete surprise, it’s the next thing that does it.  


Sam bows over him, kisses the corner of Bucky’s mouth softly. His eyes flutter closed.  
It’s casual and kind and Bucky could melt, right through his mattress and fall through the fourth floor, the third, the second until he ended up like a puddle on the basement floor.

But it’s Sam’ eyes that hold him together.  


“You’re a bold one, Wilson,” he replies and Sam smiles. Every time he does it feels like a victory to Bucky.

Sam moves to the door, after a nod of goodbye.  


“Wait, Sam,” Bucky mumbles, crawls out of bed and walks in two large paces to Sam. He hesitates for a moment, but then, Sam closes his eyes and waits for him. Bucky returns the kiss the same way it was given to him. He brushes his lips briefly over Sam's before pulling back. Sam opens his eyes and lets out a shuddering breath.  
The air hums with tension before Bucky looses all hesitation and surges forward.  
He kisses Sam fiercely. It’s inexperienced, their noses bump and they fumble awkwardly, but it’s incredible. Sam’s soft lips move against his, Sam bites down softly on his lower lip and a soft moan escapes Bucky.

Sam stays a little longer after that.

* * *

 

There’s something noticeably different about those who keep the people they’ve lost too close in their heart.   
Sam's heart is heavy with the headstones of the many he has lost.  
It keeps him to the ground, weighing too much, while he should be in the sky, souring.

He’s sad for more than the graveyard inside him, just like Bucky is distrustful and distant for more than his own lies and others.

After their first night together they spend almost every evening together, and they speak of everything, except what causes their insomnia, because there’s no need to discuss it.  
They already know. And sometimes, things are better left unspoken.  
**  
** They kiss all the time. Bucky tastes a dozen colours at once. He wants more, but their pace is slow, Bucky’s sure he will pass out by the pure intensity of it if they ever got there.  
(He does faint, when one afternoon Sam kisses him too strongly. Sam had curled his hand around Bucky’s neck, pushing him up as he deepened the kiss. Sam’s emotions had come flooding in and Bucky had blacked out for a second.  
He had been very embarrassed. Sam had been very concerned.  
They had promised to go slower after that. Sam insisted on getting a safe word. To use for when it becomes too much. Bucky had only agreed after Sam came up with one too.)

  
They speak of other things too. Sometimes the stories are sad, but mostly funny, because when Sam smiles, even the Moon says goodnight to them.

* * *

 

Everything seems to have changed after that night, yet everything appears to be the same.  
  
Sam continues to write him notes in history class in his loopy handwriting that always start with _Dear Bucky.  
_ Bucky saves them, neatly folded together under the lose floorboard under his bed.  
  
(He rereads them when he falls back, deeply into the black pit that’s always present, tucked behind his kidneys . When he’s convinced Sam hates him and nothing can change his mind about it. It takes reading a hundred _Dear Bucky_ ’s to let go off it. It’s another secret hidden deeply in the faults of his heart).

Bucky continues to watch Sam like he always does, but now when Sam smiles to him, the butterflies in his stomach aren’t the only ones that flair up high.  
Actual butterflies in multitudes have started surrounding him everywhere. He should be paying attention to them, try to listen and see what they are telling him.  
  
Something is in the air, something is shifting and it's flying down from Hell's kitchen and Harlem and now it's settling in Brooklyn.  
He should be paying attention, but he doesn't. Sam has been smiling the no-lie-tooth-gap smile and Bucky looks back, weak in his knees and smile, butterflies forgotten.  
Maybe he ignores on purpose, he isn’t sure whether he can play God.

  
They haven’t really spoken about _it,_ and _it_ is on Bucky’s mind continuously.  
He’s not obsessive at all. Well, no more than normally.  
_It_ meaning everything. Sam’s wings, the kisses, his wings, but mostly the kisses.  
The truth is: the wings surprised Bucky very little, they are such an essential part of Sam that he can no longer envision what it was like knowing Sam without them.

That Bucky isn’t the only enhanced one, that there’s a whole group up in Harlem and other places, that’s a shift. _Why not?_ wasn’t asked before. _What if?_ has been given an answer.  
  
But most of all, his mind lingers on the kisses.  
What the hell is he going to do about it.

* * *

 

Sam and Steve take up running track. Initially they had tried to convince Bucky to join them.  
  
“It will make you feel good,” Steve had argued.  
  
“I don’t see how not being able to breathe will make me feel better.” Bucky had responded, “besides I like _watching_ more.”  
  
“Oh, _I know_ ,” Sam had piped in, “but you and Steve too often get into trouble for not having the actual ability to  _run away._ ”  
  
They had continued to bicker, the two of them against Bucky, but he hadn’t given in.

And so instead he watches Sam and Steve run track.  
Same circles time and again in grey sweatshirts while their breathes stick to their bodies like the cold air in winter to the ground.  
  
They run the same pace. It takes about half an hour until Steve starts to slow down. He eventually slows down so much he and Sam are just walking really fast. They continue to do so, until Sam can't bear it anymore, shouts "on your right," and heightens the pace again.  
  
Steve gives up very soon after that.  
  
Out of breath, his face red but satisfied he plops next to Bucky.  
  
“You sure," Steve heaves "don’t want to join us next time?”  
  
“Oh, I’m sure.” Bucky looks pointedly at Steve’s heaving chest, “Very sure.”  
  
  
They watch another half an hour of Sam running track, faster and faster he goes.  
  
  
“I was wondering,” Steve starts, it’s Steve be-careful-with-Bucky-don’t-want-send-him-spiralling-voice, that as of lately he tends to use most often when it concerns Sam.  
  
“Yes, Steve,” Bucky sighs dramatically, “whatever were you wondering about?”  
He shouldn’t be mean, Steve’s trying to be kind, but Bucky doesn’t want to be treated like a porcelain doll all the time.  
Steve breathes in deeply again, from the run or because he needs courage, Bucky isn’t sure.  
  
“So, you and Sam,” Steve starts, “you know, uh, did ya...?”  
  
Bucky doesn’t respond. Steve turns redder.  
  
“Did ya-- please don't make me say it Bucky."  
  
Bucky tries to control a grin from taking over, which he thinks mostly results into him pulling a pretty weird face. “We did,” Bucky decides he shouldn’t let Steve suffer any longer, “more or less,” he adds.  
  
“Oh wow,” Steve looks, actually taken aback. “Jesus Christ.”  
  
“You’re a catholic, Steve, watch your words.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure God will forgive me for this one,” Steve snarks back,“in fact he would fucking agree with me.”  
  
Steve looks like he’s about to smack Bucky on the shoulder, but he hesitates the second before he does it.   
He pulls away and Bucky can feel his shoulder burn where Steve’s hand should have been.  
  
“I can’t believe the two of you,” and yes, Steve still hesitates, “so why if you did-“  
  
“It?” Bucky taps his two index fingers together. _It_ means something different to him than Steve, but it doesn't matter.  
  
“Yes,  _it_ ,” Steve mocks him, “So why aren’t you two, you know, together?”  
  
Bucky doesn’t know how to answer that, because he’s been wondering the same. Just hasn’t had the guts to say it out loud.

“We haven’t really talked about it,” Bucky confesses, slowly, “neither of us are very—”  
  
“Open emotionally, communicative, forthcoming, talkative?” Steve fills in,“I can keep going if you like.”  
  
“No need to rub it in,” Bucky tries to bite back, but Steve’s good mood is infectious.  
  
When Sam comes back, trotting slowly towards them he asks what they’ve been talking about.  
  
“Nothing,” Steve and Bucky say simultaneously and Sam looks at them, clearly not believing them.  
  
_Trouble,_ Sam says under his breath, _nothing but trouble._

* * *

 When they walk to the back-alley between their houses, Bucky thinks about it, _talking_ , whatever that is. 

Sam is holding his hand, it’s warm, and their fingers are intertwined. Bucky still isn’t sure what he did to deserve this. The scar on his arm feels like it’s been lit on fire.  
  
What Sam doesn’t know is that his scar runs further up his arm, stretches between his shoulder blades and goes down over his back. It stops just above the dimples on Bucky’s lower back.  
It used to be smaller, when he had just broken his arm, but ever since the scar first appeared, it has spread slowly, like a living creature.  
Sometimes Bucky wonders if it will mark his whole body one day.  
  
Nowadays when Bucky bows forward, it’s not the scar that tingles but his fingertips. It should worry him, yet it doesn’t.  
  
Sam hasn’t changed his clothes, he never does until he’s home. It makes sense, wings and all that.  
  
Sweat is dripping from Sam's hairline down his neck, disappearing under his collar.  
Bucky stares at it a little too long and swallows. He wonders if there will ever be something that Sam does that won’t turn Bucky on.    
Bucky seriously hopes its his age that’s causing it, because he can’t walk around with a semi hard-on for the rest of his life whenever Sam simply looks at him.  
  
(He doesn’t register that he has already assumed he’ll be at Sam’s side for the rest of his life, perhaps that too is due to his age. Or maybe he isn’t quite ready to realise the enormity of it).  
  
“You okay there, Buck?” Sam’s question interrupts his trail of thought. The use of nickname makes Bucky’s hummingbird heart skip a beat.  
  
Bucky nods slowly, pensively. “You?” Bucky asks, squeezing Sam’s hand.  
  
“Yeah,” Sam says, “I am.”  
  
And without saying a word, they know, _I’ll be. Now that you’re here_.  


Another back alley promise.

* * *

Natasha is the second one that tries to have a ‘chat’ with Bucky. Apparently the no-talking strategy only seems to work between him and Sam.  
  
It makes him wonder how much his friends have been talking behind his back.  
Natasha is leaning against the gate of the school, waiting for him as he arrives in a foul mood at the schoolyard.  
  
It’s a few weeks after the talk with Steve.  
  
He’s not ready for another one.  
  
She walks up to him and Bucky is almost tempted to turn around again and run straight home.  
_  
_ “So,” Natasha starts, walking up to him, “Sam is quite handsome, don’t you think?”  
  
Bucky grunts as an answer, but his mind briefly drifts to the eyes that have seen too much for such a short lived life.

_No, stay focussed, don’t let Natasha mingle in your business,_ he tells himself, once she sets her mind on something, it’s impossible to change it.

He coughs and his lungs turn light red this time, like Natasha’s hair. It often happens and he wishes she would stop doing that.

“Yes, I know” he smiles like a wolf with a grin that shows teeth, “I’ve seen him naked.”  
  
With that he strives towards the other side of the school yard. His fellow students split like the red sea. As he passes Toro, Bucky glares at him, dares him to say anything.  
  
“Not a word, dude, not a word!” Toro shouts.  


That makes Bucky smile, he hides it carefully, but it makes him smile nonetheless. For even if they are intervering in something that is none of their business, the thought that they care for him, means the world to Bucky.

* * *

  
Bucky asks his mother for some pocket money.

It’s something he has never done before and his mother gives him way too much in her enthusiasm that he's finally asked her for something.

With the money he buys ice-cream for the whole gang, two packs of shag which he and Sam trade for Toro’s canoe, who has grown bored of it and is set on impressing a girl called Ann.  
The rest of the money is put under the floorboard next to Sam’s letters.  
  
The following fridays and saturdays Sam and Bucky go out on the water down near Coney Island.  
  
Even though Autumn is already upon them, they both get a healthy glow from the sun and they share the kind of happiness that only swimming in salty water can bring.  
  
It feels like an eternal summer, but school is always waiting on Monday.  


They bring Redwing with them, who flies along the canoe as Sam makes him do cool tricks high in the sky. Flips and turns and spins.  
So do Sam and Bucky from the rocks nearby, but mostly they dive into the water from the canoe and swim for hours.  
Sam never takes of his t-shirt, even when they both are completely sure no one can see them. Trauma creates phantoms one sees everywhere.   
  
One day while they are drying in the late afternoon sun, Bucky asks if Sam’s wings are the reason why he always wears such loose clothes.  
Sam laughs, “no man, it’s my style.”  
  
"Not that you would know anything about that,” Sam adds, “would you Buck?”  


Bucky chases him shouting "Revenge!"

They laugh and swim and dance.

Bucky tells Sam about the time he went swimming in Greenwood Lake with Steve four years ago.  
They had felt the seaweed brush against their legs, teasing them. It had freaked Steve out, but Bucky was sure it was the mermaid’s kids tempting to play ‘it’.  
  
“First time I crossed the East River,” he adds, which is not entirely true.  
  
Sam’s grinning and that’s all Bucky wants nowadays, to make him smile like that.  
  
“You say like that something to be proud of.” Sam comments.  
  
Bucky sighs dramatically, throwing himself into the sand. “Can’t believe I’m dating someone who’s from Manhattan!“ he says, looking up to Sam who’s still standing.   
  
“Well, I’m dating someone who was born in Indiana, so…” Sam responds, “I think I have it worse.”   
  
“Steve, that little snitch,” Bucky hisses as he tries to tackle Sam to the ground. Sam jumps away from Bucky’s feet. Another revenge-chase starts until they're both too exhausted and drop down in the sand.  
  
“You know, it could always be worse, I could be from Jersey,” Bucky says, out of breath, and the both of them shiver at the idea of that.  
  
Neither say something about how they’re dating now, apparently.  
  
  
“Your hair is getting long,” Sam says another afternoon on the beach and Bucky wants to defend himself, but Sam continues, “I like it that way.”  
  
Sam carefully slides his hand over Bucky’s shoulder, squeezes and when Bucky nods, he continues, tracing the outline of Bucky's muscles until he settles his hand in Bucky's neck.  
Sam shuffles closer, until their sides are exactly aligned. He starts playing with Bucky’s hair, massaging Bucky’s neck just under his hairline.  


Bucky leans into it and lets out a long sigh. It feels _so good._  A shiver runs through his body. Sam must know how distracting this is.  
How much power Sam’s hands have over Bucky. He bites his lip to prevent a whimper from getting out.  
Instead, Bucky decides to take things into his own hands, figuratively speaking. (He isn't quite ready for other.... _possibilities_.)  
  
Bucky moves slowly towards Sam, turning his head. He doesn't quite know where he gets the courage from, maybe it's the sun that has settled in his skin, but he pushes Sam to his back.  
The other boy goes pliantly, sinks into the sand easily. Bucky can feel the electricity spiking in Sam's blood when he trails his right index finger over a veins in Sam's inner-wrist.  
When Bucky softly brushes his lips over it, the feeling floods into him immediately. He sucks in a breath.  
He really loves it, how they can become one like this. He had of course told Sam about it, but the other boy hadn't acted very surprised, "yeah I got that," and had suggested they should put Bucky's theory to a test. They hadn't yet until now.  
  
Bucky moves further, over Sam until their chests almost touching, Sam’s hand still in Bucky’s neck like a steady, very distracting, anchor.  
  
His face hovers above Sam’s, but he doesn’t kiss  him yet. Instead Bucky trails his nose over the right side of Sam’s neck, leaving small bites there, making Sam’s breath hitch.  
It pleases Bucky greatly that he has the same effect on Sam as Sam has on Bucky. Mostly it turns him on, a lot. He's getting really hard and it's difficult to manoever his body in such a way that Sam won't notice.  
Sam's body is twitching under Bucky, as though it takes every part of him to control himself not too move. Bucky trails kisses over Sam's collarbones, softly, as he slowly moves up.  
Then finally, he kisses Sam, slow and deep. When Sam opens his mouth in a stifled moan, he slips his tongue into Sam’s mouth. A louder moan escapes Sam, and it gives Bucky the courage to go on.  
He wants to hear it again.   
  
He teases Sam with his tongue, pulls back slowly, bites down softly on Sam’s lower lip, before he returns his attention to Sam’s neck. The left side this time.  
He could take hours doing this, hearing Sam's little _oh_ 's _._ Sam’s wriggling under him, his body tense, his wings twitching.  
  
"Come on, Buck, stop being such tease," he says. Bucky grins against Sam's collarbones.  
But Sam is growing impatient and uses his hand on Bucky’s neck to move Bucky up again, he lets Sam take the lead this time around. They kiss and kiss and kiss.  
Bucky’s legs slide to Sam’s sides, making it easier to push down. He does so, experimentally and Sam bucks up immediately, moaning loudly, hissing a _yes_ , and _oh_ , Sam’s hard too.  
Bucky can feel everything with only the thin fabric of their swimming-shorts separating them.  
Bucky wants to continue, but he knows it will be too much for him, too soon, so he kisses Sam once more, briefly, before letting himself  
fall to the side.  
  
“Where did that come from you?” Sam says, voice high, completely out of breath.  
  
“It’s your fault,” Bucky responds, voice hitching, smiling so widely it's making his jaw hurt, “you were playing with my hair.”  
  
That makes Sam grin, grabbing Bucky’s hand and pure joy comes flooding in. Sam moves to his side, lays his head on his arm, studying Bucky.  
Bucky wonders what he sees.  


Sam moves suddenly, slightly over Bucky, and kisses Bucky slowly again, before more of Sam's kisses trail over Bucky’s face, on his closed eyelids, the corner of mouth, his bottom lip before he pulls back.  
They lay side to side, in the late afternoon sun, not saying a word. Feeling happy in the small world they have created together, far away from the trouble in the city.  
  
They can’t get enough of it and it feels like they have all time in the world.  
But long summer-like autumn days will turn to winter soon and then it will feel like there's no time left at all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: a visit to Harlem, non-appropriate bird keeping, stretching of what is possible in Brooklyn and actual plot. you've warned ;)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last and longest instalment.
> 
> warning for underage... orgasms I suppose? ;) I didn't tag this fic with underage as both of them are under 18 and fully consenting in their actions, but it might irk some folks.
> 
> Other than that, same as before, like canon-typical violence and some obvious issues with regards to the fact that Bucky can hear people's thoughts without their consent and how he confuses Sam's feelings with his own, although the latter he does not mind at all.

It is exactly six months after Bucky had decided Sam is the love of his life —also known as the moment they first met each other — that Sam invites Bucky up to Harlem.  
Sam says Harlem the way only Harlemites can, with a mix of affection and an accent.

  
It’s a Sunday and Bucky remembers that Sundays are the only days that Sam can never meet up.  
He thinks of church, which he has never attended, of Sam's father, and then, even more than before, he wonders what Sam will show him today.  
Something odd and profound stirs inside him.  
  
Bucky wonders if he will meet the rest of Sam’s family. He met Sam’s mother a few weeks ago, who had looked at him disapprovingly and had clicked with her tongue.  
Sam swears she likes Bucky, Bucky isn’t so sure.  
  
He crosses the East River for the second time in this lifetime. (Sam and Bucky had promised each other on the beach that Greenwood Lake will not be mentioned ever again.)  
They take Redwing along with them on the subway, which attracts them less attention than Bucky thought it might.  
A couple of kids want to take a selfie with him and Redwing allows it with a disgruntled ruff of his feathers.

Bucky supposes New Yorkers have seen a lot more weirder stuff.  
Aliens coming down from the sky, a man dressed up in a devil’s costume fighting crime up in Hell's Kitchen, dreamwalkers and mindcontrollers; a falcon on the subway is nothing compared to it.

They take the ‘A’ which means they stay in the same car the whole trip from Brooklyn to Harlem.  
Being underground steadies something inside Bucky. He likes the warped feeling of having the earth above, to be hidden away from the light.  
A place where no one makes eye contact and no one knows or wants to know anything. You can pass through and no one will remember you were there.

Above ground they don’t go quite as unnoticed. Moving through Harlem with Sam is like walking around with a celebrity.  
Sam is stopped by everyone. He's greeted, asked how he is and before he has time to answer, people are talking enthusiastically about their own lives and getting him up to date what's been going on in Harlem.  
  
He receives slaps on his back, hugs, and those complicated hand-shakes that Bucky doesn’t understand. (But would really like to learn).  
It's fascinating and completely foreign to Bucky. He can't imagine the people in Bushwick ever welcoming him back like that. Ever not feeling despised and ostracised by the only home he's known.  
It touches him profoundly seeing Sam surrounded by strangers that love him. He refuses to admit that people continue to surprise him.  
He hides behind Sam's back, shy, feeling out of place.

Sam seems to fine with it, although Bucky knows how much he hates to be in the centre of attention.  
Eventually the torture is over, for both of them.  
  
They sneak into a side alley, and then another one, and another one, into the labyrinth of streets. Eventually they arrive at a tall building.  
Sam releases a loud sigh, almost like he’s relieved the building is still there, a small smile plays on his lips.

A young man sits in front of the large steel doors fronting the building. He’s broad and tall, his long legs stretched in front of him.  
He must be in his early 20s and he is the epitome of what Bucky might call cool.

To Bucky he appears to be the guardian of the house. Bucky isn't sure where the strange thought comes from, but he knows deep down that he's right.  
  
Before Bucky can ask Sam who the stranger is, he jumps up as he sees the two of them.  
  
Grinning widely he shouts, “the prodigal son has returned!”  
  
He runs up to them and engulfs Sam in a tight hug, lifting him up from the ground briefly.

He ruffles Sam's hair and letting his hand rest softly on Sam's head, he adds, “and I see you brought your sidekick.”

The stranger's grin grows even wider that before and he winks to Bucky. Sam tries to shrug the hand off his head, but without much effect.  
The look on Sam's face is one of bored acceptance, he seems used to it.  
Another part of Sam's life that Bucky didn't know about yet. That Sam is sharing with him.

“Gideon, my brother,” Sam says, with a deep sigh, introducing the stranger, “Bucky, my boyfriend.”  
“Nice to _finally_ meet you,” Gideon’s tone is honest, but with a little snark.  
  
Bucky can see the resemblance between the two brothers. Suddenly, like a deja-vu, he can see what Sam will one day be like, older and more carefree, all smiles.  
  
“You speak as little my brother, kid?” Gideon asks him when Bucky doesn't reply, lost in thought about Sam (again).  
  
“Sam’s chatty compared to me,” Bucky deadpans. Gideon laughs even louder than before, head thrown back.  
  
Bucky grows more in awe with him every minute.  
  
“I like this one,” Gideon says, shaking Bucky’s hand. His hand is warm and calloused compared to Bucky’s. Through his touch Bucky knows he’s telling the truth.  
  
Gideon gives off a steady, understanding feeling. Underneath it though, hidden better than in Sam’s case, there's heartbreak.  
  
“Uh, we’re going upstairs,” Sam interrupts, tugging on Bucky’s coat in the direction of the door.

It's clear he wants Gideon and Bucky separated as quickly as possible, for Gideon’s face betrays that he’s about to ask a lot of embarrassing questions and Bucky has his mind-in-the-clouds-face which tends to be reserved for Sam.

“Let’s go, Buck,” Sam pressures and Bucky follows him reluctantly up the stairs, smiling to Gideon, who waves back, winking again.  
  
“See you later, lover boys,” Gideon shouts after them, the promise of a thorough interrogation in his voice.  
  
“Yeah, whatever,” Sam shouts back as they begin walking up the stairs.

* * *

On the roof the skye is blue and big above them. The cold wind is merciless.  
  
There’s a reason so many songs have been written about rooftops in New York.  
  
High above the streets a world parallel world exists, the one below temporarily forgotten and replaced.  
Secrets are hidden there and one of Sam’s can be found here on the roof.  
  
It arises as a miniature city, towers and buildings made of different kinds of wood, almost as it has been expended over the years while the size of its inhabitants grew: a large avery sits in the middle of the roof. 

It's filled to the brim with birds, dozens of colours flying around, splashed like a Jackson Pollock painting Bucky once saw in a school book.

This must be Sam’s butterfly house.  
  
Sam approaches the cage, Bucky trailing unsteadily behind him, and he opens it at the side.  
"Here, I want you to meet someone," Sam says. As he whistles a few small white birds comes flying right to his hand.  
Bucky can only stare in wonder.  
  
Sam carefully cradles one of the birds in his hands before he handles it over to Bucky.  
Its small black eyes peek from between his fingers.  
Bucky studies it with fascination and it blinks slowly up to him. He's enthralled that Sam has entrusted him with such a small and beautiful creature.  
It flutters its wings, very unlike the slow side-ward way butterflies do and Bucky loves this little bird instantly.

 _Hello little one,_ he thinks, _what's your name?_  
  
But instead Bucky asks, biting his lip, failing to control his smile, “so, what kind of bird is she?” 

“Don’t you fucking dare, asshole,” Sam says, fighting to control a smile.

“Not a pigeon then?” Bucky dares indeed.

“I don’t know why I brought you here,” Sam responds, “you don’t deserve me.”

And it might be the first time that Bucky doesn’t flinch when he hears Sam say that.  
It's a joke so he laughs, because deep down somewhere a seed has been growing that tells him that he does deserve Sam. 

* * *

Two weeks ago a fit had returned, almost out of the blue. It had taken over Bucky completely. He had almost forgotten what it was like until he felt a nagging beat in his head again.  
And, probably very unsurprisingly, it was dedicated to birds.

So when Sam explains to him that the little creature he is holding is called a white zebra finch, Bucky knows. And when Sam points out other birds and tells Bucky in great detail about them, he knows. But it's like Bucky has forgotten everything that he had read, as he listens enraptured. Like Sam did for him and his butterflies.   
And anyway, Sam tells it better than any encyclopaedia could do. Never mind that Sam knows things about the birds that no encyclopaedia could ever tell Bucky.  
Their personalities, their favourite foods, their age and when Sam got them.

He also tells Bucky about the mysterious cage that holds the birds. He explains that the avery was built by Sam’s brother and father, as gift.   
When his avian telepathy first started to manifest, they wanted to give him a way to practice and train with different birds.  
To give him something that would allow him to see the beauty in who he is.

Now that Sam lives in Bushwick, he perhaps misses the avery most of all. But every Wednesday evening he goes up to his roof in Brooklyn and his brother goes up to the roof in Harlem and releases the birds. In a large endless swarm they fly together over New York. (An unexplained phenomenon that has been reported in several newspapers.)  
Sam waits for them and they talk for hours, until his mother sends him to bed and he sends the birds back.

They tell him everything that’s been going on in the city, “and with everything, I really mean everything,” Sam says, looking slightly traumatised.  
  


“My brother and father also took me flying,” Sam suddenly begins, “I mean, for the first time."

“What was that like?” Bucky asks curiously. He's never heard Sam speak about flying before. He's been fascinated by the idea of course, but Bucky that perhaps it was something too intimate to ask about.

   
“Scary,” Sam responds, “I was freaking terrified. You know, that someone would see, but Gideon claimed he had gotten X-ray eyesight over night and assured me no one was near.”

The memory makes Sam grin, it’s that beautiful grin again and Bucky can never quite used to it, no many times he sees it.  
He hasn't quite discovered how to make it appear, it seems to be linked to Sam's memories.

“It was freaking amazing too, although I was completely bruised by the end of the day," Sam laughs, "it was worse than learning how to ride a bike.”

Sam turns his hand up and shows a small scar on the palm of his hand. Bucky takes Sam's sturdy hand with its thin and elegant fingers and brings it slowly close to his face. He kisses the scar softly.  
Sam just scuffs like he can’t believe Bucky sometimes.

_I don't know how to ride a bike_ , Bucky vaguely thinks.

   
"It made me feel free,” Sam adds quietly as though he's sharing a secret that’s meant for Bucky’s ears alone. Bucky understands that, only too well.

They sit in the cold sun for a while, the birds cooing around them and Bucky feels something inside that he hasn’t felt for a long time, a tranquility, a peacefulness with himself and the world.  
He closes his eyes, he knows Sam is studying him , with a kind of seriousness that makes Bucky want to shy away from his gaze.  
  
“Buck--” Sam starts saying, but stops.

“Hmmm?" Bucky responds, looking up from where he was laying down, "do we need to leave?”

“Yeah, that too, but---” Sam answers, “ but I wanted to say something important, you know, before we leave.”

"Okay,” Bucky says, a little unsure of what to expect. He pushes himself upright.

   
Sam lets out a shuddering breath, and that catches Bucky's attention more than anything. Bucky is supposed to be the nervous one, but he feels calm. Their roles reversed.

“Uh, you don't have to say anything," Bucky says, but Sam gestures, _no, I want to say this--I need to._

Sam turns to him, with his warm fingers he traces Bucky’s jawline, his neck, his arm and scar.  
He places his lips against the hollow of Bucky's throat. Bucky's eyes flutter closed.  
  
_I love you_  
  
It's said without doubt, without hesitation, but exist fully as the honest truth. And yet, Bucky cannot comprehend it.  
_Please don’t lie,_ Bucky didn’t want to say it, but now he has and it hangs bitterly in the air between them, he feels his heart drop.  
A burning heath under his skin. Yet he feels so cold.  
  
What he should have said is, _I love you back_ but instead he gives Sam his knee-jerk response. It's his desperation seeping out of his veins. To deny that what he wants more than anything.  
He can feel Sam smiling against the crook of his neck, unfazed as always by Bucky's erratic thoughts. 

_ You always know I’m not, you always know if I would. _

Bucky understands what Sam is telling him, giving even more than his love. He realises that he’s known for quite some time that Sam knows.  
He supposes that maybe Sam knew from the first day, or maybe he found out later, but that he’s given Bucky the time to feel confident enough to share it.  
  
And Bucky wants it, that freedom Sam spoke about of enjoying who you are, to stop hiding all the time.

 “I hear lies, I see what people hide, I catch butterflies,” Bucky says out loud for the first time in his life, a tear escapes that he couldn't keep in.

The words are soft and the winds takes them away, but he knows Sam has heard them.  
It’s far more than those three words Bucky has been swallowing.

* * *

 

 ~~Dear Bucky,~~  
  
Look Buck, asking everyone of our friends whether Harlem or Bushwick is superior is **UNFAIR**. UNFAIR, you hear me?  
All of you are from fucking Brooklyn!!  
Obviously the vote would be 1 against 13.  
  
So to answer the question that you asked me before (but I refused to answer because clearly Harlem is superior to Brooklyn!! ) yes, let's make a promise never to cross the East River again, you romantic idiotic.  
  
  
(But from which side?? HA, you didn't think of that did you!! Look out, before you know it... you might be stuck between the Hudson and the East River.)

* * *

 

Gideon is waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs.  
  
“Had fun, lover boys?” He shouts up as they descend.  
  
“Yeah, whatever,” Sam answers but the tone of his voice betrays his fondness.  
  
"Sometimes I think the only word Sam knows is whatever," Gideon comments in a serious tone to no one in particular.

Gideon swings an arm around both of them as he pushes them in the direction of the next location on Sam’s list, one Bucky has yet to ask about.

It’s not his fault, Sam is very distracting and he’s --only a bit-- overwhelmed with emotions. Gideon swimming an arm around him, including him and touching him isn’t exactly helping.  
He knows it’s pretty fucked up that he cannot handle basic affection from strangers, so Bucky tries not to show how it effects him, but it’s so much, too much and he hadn’t felt it in so very long.

A quiet noise escapes him.

“Oh, shit,” Gideon says, pulling his arm back, “I forgot about your thing, fuck, I'm sorry kid,” and Bucky doesn’t even know what his thing is, at the moment, Sam probably told Gideon about his aversion to touching people.

"It’s cool, it’s cool,” Bucky says but Bucky has never been cool a day in his life with anything.

Sam and Gideon know this too, as they both smile, the same kind,“yeah, it’s cool,” Gideon says and ruffles Bucky's hair.

He lets it slide like Bucky isn't some kind of freak that can't handle normal human interaction, and says cheerfully instead, "so, are you excited to finally meet to the others?”

* * *

  
As they walk higher up in Harlem, Bucky finally discovers what today was about (although he will always remember it the day that Sam professed his love to him).  
  
Gideon and Sam are bringing him to a meeting of the Harlem's Heroes. A society he has heard about in whispers, but never more than that.  
Some claim it's a guerrilla group of mutants, others that it's an auction where you can offer your ability for the highest price, others that it's a series of smaller societies discussing the future of enhanced people.  
  
The last rumor is closest to the truth.  
As Sam and Gideon explain to him what it's really about, Bucky suddenly sees the connection, the hints Sam had already given him: that what Sam's father had started has grown beyond his legacy.  
The fact that Bucky is being invited into this is an honour beyond words.  
He's longed for a way to find others like him for so long, but to truly witness the demise of his loneliness is something that is almost incomprehensible.

The two brothers explain that after their father's death, the church had been closed.  
Their mother red-eyed but strong-willed had found she had had enough of it. Her family had given everything and everything had been taken from them.

The folks in Harlem understood. But questions kept filling the sky. Who would protect them now? Who was to lead?

Eventually it was Luke Cage who had stood up and done something in the chaos of reverent Wilson's death.

And following Luke's example, others came, others dared, others followed.  
And although the questions were born out of fear, the answers were born out of hope.

"The beginning of Harlem's Heroes was total chaos," Gideon recalls, "no one truly knew would work best and decisions had to be made nonetheless."

They had to find a way to ensure security, safety, anonymity. Should they put down names and notes of the meetings, or not?  
  
Is it for families, or only enhanced individuals? Is it an support group, a form of community organising, or the road to revolution?  
  
One of the early decisions was made on membership: they decided on an introductory system, in which older members could introduce new ones, with the approval of at least 5 other members.  
Names were used as little as possible.  
  
Many unanswered questions remain. Some of which they discuss during weekly meetings. They follow the tradition of Sam's father, so the meetings are always held on Sundays, an hour after Mass.

The meeting they are attending today is held in an empty garage. Inside the cold space the cemented walls scrape a little away from the excitement of a new adventure and replace it with the realism of persecuted lives.

Bucky is surprised to recognise a few faces, like Ororo Munroe, who volunteers at the Botanic Gardens and Bucky occasionally speaks with.  
Then there's Namor, who lives up in Williamsburg. He knows Bucky's mother very well and yet for some reason really hates Bucky.  
  
Some folks have their faces hidden and sit in the back, some loudly introduce themselves to everyone.  
More and more fill up the room and Bucky's overwhelmed that there are so many of them. So many people like him.  
He has to remind himself to close his mouth, or Sam does it by pushing his jaw gently up, with a snicker.  
  
As they settle down, Sam and Gideon quickly attract attention. They say hello and talk shortly with the two brothers.  
They greet Bucky too and he watches with fascination how they don't shake his hand, instead they lay their hands over the hearts very briefly.  
He quickly copies the gesture.  
When he asks Sam about it, the other boy explains to him that the board had quickly realised that some people might be influenced by touch. In general people wouldn’t know about each other abilities or might be unwilling to share so they’ve developed their own gestures and habits to communicate so not to exclude anyone that.  
  
As not to target anyone, everyone does it. For similar reasons people aren’t allowed to wear perfume or cologne. The system is not perfect, but they are figuring it out.  
  
Bucky's heart is beating faster and faster. He hopes the hummingbird inside won't escape. He should feel warm, but he feels so cold instead.

 

* * *

   
Some time later the sounds die out, people settle down, and a gorgeous woman who introduces herself as Misty Knight opens the meeting.  
  
It starts with a welcoming word, the introduction on the agenda, a discussion on what has happened since they last met.  
This week is dedicated to the discussion of homeless enhanced youth and recruitments in neighboring burroughs.  
  
As the meeting goes on, Sam whispers in their silent language to him, commenting on the different speakers, on the things that are being organised.  
Bucky secretly thinks Sam should be representative of Harlem, he has the clarity of mind and leadership skills that role requires in abundance.

 _So what do you think?_ Sam says at the certain point.

_I think today was the best day of my life,_ Bucky answers without hesitation or second thought.

Sam snorts fondly. _And I thought Steve was dramatic, geez Buck, you’re so honest all the time._

_What’s yours?_ Bucky asks, curiously, _favorite day I mean._

_The day we went to the butterfly garden,_  Sam answers and a different kind of butterflies flutter up inside Bucky's belly as Sam answers without any doubt.

_Well, well well,_ Bucky comments, _Aren’t we being romantic?_

_We really are, aren’t we?_ Sam grins, _we're disgusting, I would hate us._

_You know what would make this day even better?_ Bucky smirks.

Sam pulls his this-means-trouble-frown (the same look he has before agreeing with whatever Steve and Bucky propose to do),  _what exactly are you suggesting?_

_Well,_ Bucky grins wider, _no one would know, because nobody understands us, if you know what I mean._

Sam swallows, a light shiver goes through him. Bucky knows it the wings that move in anticipation.

_There’s a whole lot of dirty mind under that angelical face of yours, Buck,_ is all Sam says to that, and Bucky takes that as a _yes_ , but before he can actually use that dirty mind of his, M isty's voice rings out in the room, saying,“could the members of Bushwick-community stop giggling and concentrate on the meeting?”

Both boys turn red as the whole room directs their attention to them.

Bucky looks down, in shame, but Sam has the audacity to comment right then, _You do know there is probably someone with a telepathic ability in this room, having heard ever single one of your thoughts?_

As Bucky turns even redder, Sam's grinning maniacally, and that only makes the two of them giggle even louder. 

A collective sigh is heard through the meeting.

* * *

  
He should have said _I love you back_ when he still had the time. God only knows when he'll see Sam again. Maybe he should have treasured him more, dark skin against white sheets. Long shadows with large wings.  
  
_That's the first thing I will say to him if we ever meet,_ Bucky will think to himself when they take his arm. _I love you, Samuel Wilson._

* * *

After a few weeks Sam, Gideon and Bucky have built up a rhythm. The two of them come to Harlem early in the morning with Redwing, their ever faithful companion. They visit the avery and they join Gideon downstairs again, who leads them to a different meeting place of the Harlem's Heroes every week.  
Gideon always knows the way, for he’s more deeply involved than Sam is.

After the meetings Gideon leaves with different people every time and Sam and Bucky make their way back to Brooklyn again. Sometimes they stay longer and eat at Gideon’s house, sometimes Sam shows Bucky parts of Harlem only he knows about.  
Bucky gets the impression Sam prefers to be back quickly. He’s always on the edge of, ready to make a run.  


On Sunday number 5 while Sam is in the bathroom upstairs, Bucky and Gideon wait outside for him on the steps of Gideon's house. Winter has not let go of New York yet and their breaths form misty clouds around them.

“Sooo," Gideon starts, something Sam has warned Bucky about. He had said that once Gideon starts a conversation with a prolonged “so” he’s about ask something you don’t really want to answer.  


“Bucky," he start, "we haven't known each other very long, but considering we're probably going to be brothers in law soon enough," Bucky blushes at the comment, but Gideon doesn't say anything about it, "I have been wondering about something. You obviously don't have to tell me," Gideon adds, interpreting Bucky's silence as hesitation, "if you don't want to. I was just curious, since you and Sam seemed to have your whole--" Gideon gestures with both his hand in the air even more dramatically, "--thing going on.”  
  
"Yes?" Bucky asks, he supposes Sam and he do have a whole "thing" going on, but he's unsure what Gideon is trying to get at.  
  
Gideon seems to take that as the sign to finally cut to the chase.  
  
"Like, what is your thing, kid, what do you do?” Gideon asks him while waving his hands in the air like a ….magician?

Bucky had a suspicion Gideon might ask him about this. Sam says his brother is very nosy (although Sam had definitely used a different word to describe his brother). He doesn’t mind the question as much as he thought he might. Ever since telling Sam, he wants to shout it out to the world. It's strange, it goes so strongly against his natural instinct of keeping everything he thinks and sees a secret. He probably shouldn't do that, but telling Gideon won't do much harm. Besides that, he trusts Gideon.  
  
"Right," Bucky says. He swallows loudly, "you first?" he says hesitantly, in a sort of a if-you-show-me-yours-I’ll show you mine-attitude,which he doesn't really dare to have. 

“Strength,” Gideon responds immediately, “based on the length of hair, believe it or not.”

Bucky hadn't expected that, but then again, he hadn't really thought about it. He supposes that there's an infinity of abilities out there. He's mostly been obsessed with abilities related to people's brains, like Sam's ability to speak to birds, himself and what he believes Steve might have. 

"I suppose, um," Bucky answers after some thought, "that uh, I'm like a walking lie detector.”

For a second Gideon looks surprised, like he had actually expected a different answer, but his expression turns back to neutral so fast that Bucky thinks he must have imagined it.  
But Gideon's yellow misty breaths in the morning light have turned slightly orange.

"That's pretty cool," Gideon comments, "not what I expected, but pretty cool." 

Bucky doesn’t think what he does is 'pretty cool’, but he doesn't voice his disagreement. He isn't sure if Gideon would understand. That Bucky would do anything to have strength instead of living in a parallel universe only he inhabits that’s made of illusions and perception.

“You could make great asset to the Defenders,” Gideon adds, carefully. 

“What do you mean?” It's a name Bucky has not heard before.  
  
Gideon's eternal open and easy going expression is suddenly gone.  
He looks at Bucky, who knows he's being judged whether he's worthy or not. It makes him uneasy.  
  
Slowly, Gideon explains to Bucky that there is a group of people in Harlem outside the Heroes. They don't work the way the Heroes do. These are the kind of folks that do not sit idly while their own are taken from the streets, never to appear again. They do not sit idly by as they witness the murders of their friends and family and see nobody, the government, the courts, the neighborhoods do nothing. The news won’t report a thing and when they do, they blame the victims.

"Have you never wondered where they go? And wanted to do something about it?" He asks Bucky, eyes clear and intent.

Bucky swallows, he has, _of course_ he has. Almost his entire childhood he has spent wondering whether anyone would go looking for him if he disappeared.

"Don't you want justice for those who died?" Gideon adds, voice louder as becomes more agitated with Bucky's silence.  
  
“Maybe it's different, back in Bushwick. But here in Harlem we can’t afford ourselves the luxury of ignorance. Of turning away, because we get killed anyway. _Do you understand that?_ They don’t give a fuck about us disappearing.”  
  
Gideon lets out a shuttering breath, looking at something in front of them that Bucky cannot see, a memory perhaps. Quietly, he says, "the Defenders, they do something."

"I don’t think I want to be an asset,” Bucky answers softly.

Gideon returns his gaze to Bucky, eyes as sad as Sam’s. As though Bucky didn't understand what Gideon had just told him, not truly.  
  
Gideon nods slowly. "I get it," he says, but Bucky knows Gideon is lying and he hears only his previous words echo, _some of us can’t afford the luxury of ignorance._

Gideon walks away, leaving Bucky behind, cold on the pavement. He and Sam don’t go to the meeting that afternoon. There's no Gideon to guide them.  
  
Together they walk mindlessly through Harlem. After two blocks of walking, Sam asks him what's wrong. He hadn't even asked where Gideon was.  
  
"Just thinking," Bucky says. What Gideon told him is something Sam probably never needed to be taught, like Bucky did, it was his life already. 

Bucky tries to push the thought of panic and guilt away. _Can’t afford the luxury of ignorance._

  
When he hears another name being whispered, he decides to write it down in a small red note book that his mother had given him for his 10th birthday.  
He writes down their names and their ages, where they were from, where they died or were taken from. And if possible, what their gift was.  
It’s a start.  
Anoher idea of joining the fight starts to grow slowly.

* * *

One cold afternoon Rachel Argosy invites him and Sam to come over to her house for some hot chocolate milk.  
It’s after a Harlem's Heroes meeting and Sam and Bucky have nothing planned yet for that afternoon. Bucky says so to Rachel and when she notices his hesitation, she tempts him by telling him she has just baked a fresh blueberry pie.  
Although the pie is very tempting, curiosity makes him say yes in the end. Ever interested in the lives of adult ‘enhanced’.  
  
Sam deeply sighs when Bucky tells him they are visiting Rachel later.  
_Next time,_  Sam says, _ask me first_. Bucky thinks that is a bit melodramatic and does not understand fully why Sam was entirely justified in his reaction, for they end up listening to hours of Rachel 'playing' the violin.  
  
Already an activity that Bucky isn’t naturally interested in, what's worse is that she plays awfully, absolutely horrendously.  
He tries to be polite, but after 20 minutes he starts fidgeting. After an hour he's sure he'll burst out of his skin while his ears die a slow death. Sam just stares at him, the whole two hours long, and Bucky doesn’t return the look because he knows Sam is broadcasting ' _this is your fault'_  from every fiber of his being.  
  
And then, just when they think it's all over, Rachel asks them what they think of her music.

They politely answer they had enjoyed it, "thank you, but we must leave now," but it only gets them another half hour of ‘music’.

After finally being released from their musical hell, they stand outside in the rain, their ears ringing.

The water makes their clothes heavy and Sam hates it, how their wet clothes make it impossible to move easily, but Bucky feels grounded. They decide to make it up to their bodies by going to to the abandoned diner with the white-eyed waitress.  
  
They order tea and apple-cake. Outside the rain taps against the window and inside the water drips from their clothes on the tile floor. The same two sounds joined in harmony.  
Bucky and Sam share glances over their warm tea, the way young love works, fleeting but with all the power of one's soul.  
Sam has already forgiven him somewhere in between the first and fifth subway stop home and admits that the blueberry pie had almost made it all worth it.

Bucky glances up again from his tea and sees that Sam is already looking at him. He quickly looks down, weirdly guilty that he's been caught, but can't resist to look up again.  
Sam is still staring, the gap in his teeth shows.

It's another good day.

* * *

**  
** It’s mid-March when Bucky loses control again.  
It's been over 10 years since the last time.  
  
He had been only 5 years old and his kindergarten teacher had told his parents disapprovingly that Bucky had hit another kid earlier that day.  
"This is something I do not allow in my class," she had told them and their parents had nodded in agreement.  
  
It hadn’t been true, but he had seen his mother’s disappointed expression, his father’s stern face and his teacher had kept talking and talking until her lie became the truth.  
He saw it happen, right before his eyes, how his parents idea of him was warped while he was forced to witness it.  
He knew he had to say something, but he was scared to. Inside the feeling had bubbled up until he could no longer control it. And so he had shouted, out of pure desperation that "it isn't true! She's lying!"

“James,” his father had said disapprovingly, “this is not how you react to such an accusation. You apologise. “

The pure feeling of injustice when the three adults had looked at him like he was the one lying, while he knew better than any of them what the truth was, was so overwhelming that he had lost consciousness completely.  
After that he had promised himself never to let others have so much influence over him again.  
  
It takes 10 years. This time it happens during a meeting of the Harlem's Heroes.

The lie isn’t even that horrible, it has nothing to do with him and it’s not even a really terrible one. But the speaker is swearing up and down that the mayor will help them with something and Bucky can so clearly hear and see that the man doesn’t even believe it himself.  
Yet the lie spreads across the room in excited whispers. He sees its white threat moving into people's minds and he can’t say nothing, can he? He must say something.  
  
He tries to whisper it, but he can't get the words out, it needs to built up again.   
Sam looks up, tilting his head, _what's wrong Buck?_

“It’s not true!” he shouts, the words bursting out of him. But this time it's not three unbelieving adults staring at him: it's 70 and they all look at him like he's crazy. Their judgment drills into his skin.

“It’s not true,“ he whispers. As he loses consciousness once more, he wonders whether this makes him more dramatic than Steve like Sam claims he is. 

* * *

  
When he wakes up again, he sees Sam and Gideon next to him. Identical looks of concern on their faces.  
He tries to sign that he’s okay, but he can’t seem to lift his arm. Or turn his head for that matter.  
Everything is so heavy and Bucky is so tired, he wants to sleep for an eternity, if it weren't for Sam he would.

“Quite a thing you did there," a voice says and he turns his face slowly towards the sound. It's like he is stuck in syrup.  
He sees the voice belongs to a woman. He knows he should remember her name, but he can't, his mind is too cloudy. He's seen her before. She's not someone who goes unnoticed.  
  
“There is no need to worry," she says to him, "unfortunately it’s quite normal for an untrained empath to exercise themselves too much and lose consciousness.”   
  
“Although I must admit it was quite remarkable how you made us all see the lie. I don’t think I have ever seen that before.”

Her stare is uncompromising, she looks straight through him and Bucky wonders if he sometimes looks like that, when he's daring people to lie.  
Bucky breaks the eye-contact, flushing with embarrassment. _Danielle Moonstar,_ that was her name.

“I assume that hasn’t happened before?” Danielle asks. When Bucky ducks his head, she answers her own question, “oh. You didn’t know you could.”

Danielle keeps talking, rapidly, to whom Bucky isn't sure of. Bucky only half listens, not understanding the words she is saying.  
The murmurs in the background are distracting and he feels exposed and ashamed about before.  
He wonders what has happened to the liar. He thinks it's unfair to the man, what Bucky did. Everybody lies after all.  
He must be in a sideroom of the warehouse where the meeting was taking place.   
He probably caused quite stir, he feels his cheeks flush with embarrassment again.  
  
He knows Danielle is asking him a question, the way she's looking at him again, but it's far away, his mind drifting. He looks to Sam for a translation.

Sam answers for him. Bucky can hear him explain that Bucky has been figuring his ability out all by himself before they met.   
Danielle looks startled at that, "it’s very rare for someone with Bucky’s abilities not to have enhanced parents," she comments, "it's dangerous for a young empath not to have any help."  
  
_Empath?_  He has heard that word before, but he doesn't remember what it means.  
  
He doesn't hear Danielle has been asking him yet another question until Sam squeezes his hand softly. _Buck?_

"If you are interested I could help you," Danielle says slowly to him, "would you like that?"  
  
_Yes_ , Bucky thinks, more than anything. Would she really? He knows people really do something out of the selflessness of their hearts.  
  
“So," Danielle continues, making sure he's listening this time around, "come find me when you’re a little more stable on those skinny legs of yours?”

Bucky is happy he hears Sam huff over the insult to Bucky’s legs.  
He squeezes Sam's hand.  
  
"I will," he whispers slowly, uncertain about what has just happened.  
  
"Good," she says.

He falls asleep with the thought that as long as Sam likes his legs, he’ll be fine.

 

* * *

Danielle Moonstar probably has the coolest house in New York, if not the whole of the US. Bucky supposes it comes with having a cool name.  
It feels like the house of a witch, but he's too shy to ask her about it. Large windows, wooden floors and wooden beams, the most colourful furniture.  
The house feels like it's loved and alive.  
  
Once they have settled down on a couch with some coffee, the first thing he asks Danielle is what an empath is.  
If his lack of knowledge shocks her, she doesn't let him know. If he's inability to be polite and slowly get to the point bothers her, she doesn't show it either.  
  
She chuckles and takes a careful sip of her coffee.  
She drinks it black, no milk, no sugar, something Bucky can admire. He takes his with about half a gallon of milk.  
  
Then she starts talking, full of patience but without softening any of her words.  
She explains to him that those who are empaths have very diverse abilities, but "what seems to be the common denominator is that they are able to perceive other people's emotions or thoughts and some are able to manipulate or influence others as well."  
  
She gives examples of situations and other empathic abilities. The more Danielle speaks, the more Bucky recognises himself in these other empaths.  
It's like she's holding up a mirror to him. It's difficult to look into it.  
  
  
She asks him to speak a little bit too, in return. About himself mostly, "to really be able to help you, I must understand you" and asks when his power --she calls it power, instead of gift, he wonders about that too-- manifested.  
  
And so Bucky tells the beautiful woman named Danielle Moonstar about his childhood, in bits and chaotic pieces. How he had started to realise that he was hearing people lie, how much that had confused him, how touch made it worse. How he came to realise he was the only one hearing the lies. She listens to him, fully engaged, and rarely interrupts. Once, to asks if it was lies or peoples' perception of the truth he hears.

"Is there a difference?" he had asked.  
"Yes, but will get to that," she had answered, "all in good time, grasshopper."

  
She also tells him about what she can do. ("that’s rude to ask, Bucky", "Right. I’m sorry. It's just that--" "It's okay, I will tell you.")  
She explains that her empathic ability is bound to fear. She can sense what people are afraid of, what their nightmares show them in secret and she is able to create illusions of people's greatest fears.  
She hasn't been able yet to take people's fear from them, but it's something she's working on.  
  
"The power of the empath," Danielle continues, "is at heart two-faced. It can go both way, depending on those who yield it, it might be a healing power, or a destructive one. Only you can decide on that."  
  
"But you must know, that many will see empaths as people who are inherently dangerous, manipulative, even though the word empath is related to the word empathy."  
  


After their second cup of coffee is finished, they move to a set of chairs near Danielle's fireplace. The flames flickr and Bucky can see their reflection in Danielle's eyes.  
  
"Yours, Bucky," Danielle starts, "seems more than anything related to people's perceptions and people's realities."  
  
"Could I influence them?" Bucky asks. It's a fear he has long held closely to his heart, never letting it see the light of day.  
  
"Yes, as you did during the meeting, you made us hear what he was really saying, sharing your power so to speak." Danielle answers, "but it can manifest in many others ways. Like with me, it could be an illusion that disappears again, but you could also permanently make people believe something that you want them to believe. To warp their truths. But it might only be related to you, not to others things. So the lie would have to be linked to you."  
  
Bucky swallows, the thought terrifies him. Maybe when Danielle said dangerous it was about others after all. What if he lost control again?

"So, uh, for example, I could make people believe I was never there? Like they never saw me?"  
  


"Yes, possibly. But that would be a dangerous thing to experiment with, as it might influence who you are. If you make people believe you do not exist, will you eventually seize to exist? Perhaps you would end up living as a ghost," she answers him, thoughtfully, "but Bucky, these are philosophical questions that might never be answered."  
  
Suddenly Steve's moms words come back to him,  _be happy death isn’t your parent, otherwise you would be a ghost, stuck in between life and death._ He wonders if he hasn't already been doing that, but instead of being stuck in between life and death, he's been stuck between his own world and that of others, truth and lie.  
  
  
"But again, the extend of what you can do is something we can explore in training. Although it's already clear to me that you hearing people's 'true thoughts' is only a symptom, it's the strongest aspect of what you can do perhaps, yet I'm very sure there's much more to you."

   
They talk a little while longer, but Danielle notices his exhaustion and tells him it's been enough for today.  
  
He will have to come to her house twice per week for the actual training. She reassures him she will discuss it with his parents. Bucky isn't so sure whether that _is_ reassuring.  
  
He places both his hands over his heart to express his gratitude and she copies the gesture. But she doesn't walk him to the door yet, instead she looks at him with those dark thoughtful eyes that he cannot hide from. 

"Bucky, you must know that what you did for Sam is partially the reason of why I welcomed you here today."  
  
"I didn't do--" Bucky tries to say but she interrupts him the same way he did with her.

** "**No, let me finish," Danielle says. "You haven't known Sam for a very long time, but I saw him grow up. He was such a sweet, cheerful child."  
Danielle smiles at the memory.  
"But when his father and Riley died, he changed. I'm sure he told you that he wasn’t allowed to talk about anything that happened that day. We were all so afraid that the church and other enhanced might be exposed. So every one just pretended it hadn’t happened."  
  
Bucky knows this, but he doesn't try to interrupt again.  
  
"You know people called him Snap for a while? No one knew really why, but I think it was because something snapped inside him that day," Danielle adds with a frown, "the silence didn't start immediately, you know. At first he began lashing out, getting into trouble, asking for somebody to pay attention to him, but they never punished him for it, they just pitied him, so he grew quiet."  
  
Danielle doesn't seem to be the person to run her hands through her hair in frustration, but Bucky can almost see her do it.  
She smiles, suddenly.  
  
"But then, out of the blue, he said something again during a meeting. It was like a miracle."

That part Bucky hadn't known, he feels without Sam being there to tell his own story, he doesn't want to know. He wants Danielle to stop speaking. But she keeps talking.  
  
"Bucky, don’t think we just accept anyone into our midst. It's something you must threat with integrity and dedication. But you must know that we are happy that you have joined us. Most of all we are grateful, for what you’ve done for Sam, and what you mean to him. So thank you, for that. It means the world to many of us, that you were able to help him when we only watched." 

And then, like clouds before the sun, Danielle's solum expression is replaced by a small smile and she adds, "I'll see you next week."  
  
And with that he's outside again, alone with his thoughts. He hates adults and the way they make him think. He tells a small yellow bird on the way home to find Sam and tell him that Bucky will be back shortly.  
At least Sam doesn't complicate things too much, Bucky thinks fondly. He likes the way they are together and the way they don't have to spell everything out to understand each other. And Bucky doesn't agree with Danielle, he doesn't think he saved Sam, Sam saved him. (Although maybe, just maybe, they saved each other, he doesn't linger on that.)  
  
The bird ignores him and Bucky doesn't even care.  


* * *

Bucky goes to Danielle's training sessions twice a week, as promised. His parents allow him and he wonders what Danielle did, what his parents deepest fears are. He doesn't ask.  
  
Sometimes he loves it, sometimes he hates it.  
The reason he returns every week is because he likes Danielle's other students so much, he especially takes a liking to a girl called Wanda.

During their training-sessions, Danielle tries to push him, she dares him to go further, to risk something.  
She’s especially intrigued by how he sees colours, the link between his empathy and his synesthesia.  
He wonders whether he should tell her about the butterflies too, eventually he decides not to.   
  
He does admit to her that he can sometimes taste things too, when someone's thoughts are very strong, and she wonders if any of his other senses are enhanced.  
She asks him when he gets the strongest taste.

"Around Sam," he answers before he realises what he has just implied. Wanda makes jokes full of innuendo for a month.  
  
Danielle gives him homework, like he doesn't have enough of that already. She tells him he needs to learn how to analyse what he perceives better and the only way to do that is by practicing.  
She tells him to concentrate more specifically when he hears people lie, for people tend to say a lot and often hide what they really think.  
So instead of focussing on the lies, he will need to discover the truth that they don't want the listener to hear.  


* * *

  
Bucky's next fit concerns City Mottos.  
For the first time his parents don't seem too worried about his obsessive behaviour. In fact, they welcome it, almost as if they are relieved the fits have truly returned.  
His father gives him a book that explains 'the history of State and City mottos.'  
  
Bucky accepts it quietly, his father looks at him for too long until he tells Bucky not to worry about it.  
The looks reminds him of the time that he went to stay with Steve for a week while his parents visited family in Indiana.   
Once his parents had returned and picked him up at Steve's, his mother had hugged him tightly and his father had given him that same look.  
"W elcome back, son," his father had said and Bucky had thought, _but I was never gone._

Bucky knows he will never understand his parents and is beginning to realise that it maybe has less to do with him being a _teenager_  --therefor sharing a universal hate for parents for a brief period of time between the tender age of 15-18-- but that it has more to do with the fact that they don’t understand each other because they never talk nor share anything.  
  
He's happy with the book nonetheless, and thanks his father for it.

First Bucky looks up Shelbyville, Indiana. In italics it says, _Pride in Progress_ , and after that he just keeps reading, for hours and hours, only focussed on the words.  
Eventually he gets to _Unity makes strength_ (Brooklyn). Bucky takes it as the sign he has been looking for. Although in reality it's just an excuse to do finally something.  
He puts the book aside and jumps up. His new purpose makes his strides long.  


"Where are you going?" his mother shouts after him.

"Sam!" which seems the obvious answer to everything Bucky does, but his mother apparently still needs to ask. 

"Ask him to come over on Friday for dinner," sheshouts back.

"Will do!" and he storms out of the house.

Bucky knows by now the shortest way to get to Sam's house and it takes him 10 minutes tops.  
Sam is already waiting on the steps outside for him when Bucky arrives. He’s petting a bird, must be one of those snitching pigeons that told on him.

"I think it’s time," Bucky says theatrically and out of breath. Sam hums in agreement, _it is time._

"Oh, and my mom was wondering if you wanna join us on dinner on Friday,” and Sam agrees to that too.

* * *

   
And so they set up their own group of the enhanced.  
Bucky names it _the Underground_ and Sam allows it. Bucky has an ancient old believe that a good name means a good start.  
  
In secret, Bucky holds the notebook full of names close to his heart. Along with the list, he has created a map that indicates where people have been taken. He proposes the idea of setting up a guard in certain areas that are more at risk.   
He’s bursting with ideas, but he knows that the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach is caused both by excitement and cold fear.  
  
Sam agrees, but reminds Bucky they'll need members and training first, before they can undertake anything.  
Sam makes a list of people they could potentially approach. He finds it utterly important that people know that if they do not want to join, they will not have to.  
These won't simply be meetings, people need to be informed of what they get themselves involved with.  
  
He organises everything and Bucky thinks that this is what Sam's supposed to do.

They first go to Toro, who sees them walking hand in hand coming up to him and turns straight around and starts running. _Actual running_.  
Bucky can’t quite believe it, but Toro shouts to them as he runs passed that he "knows the two of you and you are fucking never up to no good!"

They let him be, but Toro gives in to his curiosity three days later and approaches them. Bucky tries not to look too smug about it.  
  
When Sam and Bucky explain their plan to him, he wants in immediately.

“So how did you know about me?” He asks and Bucky answers that when he had asked Toro once why he was so obsessed with fire, Toro had answered, "no reason" but what he had really thought was "because I can fucking control it, dumbass."  
  
Toro can’t quite deny that.

The three of them go look for a 'clubhouse', as Toro likes to call it.  
It needs to be reclusive and have enough space for them to train in.  
They walk and cycle through Brooklyn for hours, entering empty buildings that probably could (and once for real) collapse on them.  
  
Bucky has missed hanging out with Toro so much. He knows it's mutual by the way Toro looks at him.  
They eventually find an abandoned building near the old subway car yard called the Livonia Yard.  
  
The next person they ask is Steve. For his eyes only see his own nightmares and the future of others. That’s probably why he isn’t surprised about their proposal.  
The first thing Steve says is, "we gotta find a girl, our gender balance is completely off."

It provokes a long debate on who to include and who to exclude, depending on whether they are enhanced or not, like Natasha.  
They can't decide. Sam, who has become their leader, decides for them and tells Natasha.  
He believes it does more harm to exclude someone you love, that whatever dangerous potential there might be if someone without 'the gift' is included.   
  
She pretends she is not hurt they doubted her loyalty, but Bucky can see she is, deep down.  
  
"Life is like that," she says, and Bucky doesn't says back, like he should have, "it doesn’t have to be that way."

* * *

Slowly their group grows and grows.  


At times it feels like a game, an adventure. 

When another name circulates of a disappeared child it’s not as much fun anymore.  
  
Sam and Bucky talk less and less. Another month passes and they barely speak at all anymore. Always too busy it seems. 

 

* * *

  
They have their first fight. It's not even really a fight. It's Bucky refusing to talk and distancing himself from Sam, that's what it is. Or at least, that's what Sam will call it later.  
  
The truth is, Bucky longs so much for Sam it hurts.  
It hurts so much and it grows and grows inside of him.   
  
Touching Sam has only grown more intense, because behind every kiss and sigh there is the fear that it might be the last one.They both feel it.  
Bucky reads this in the way Sam crawls against him, squeezing him as though he might disappear, trying to get closer closer closer.  
Bucky however is moving farther and farther away, both in body and mind.  
  
More and more often he turns his head away when Sam tries to kiss him.  
Every time he does it, Sam looks completely undone. By Bucky's lingering touch and by Bucky's rejection.  
Tears well up in his eyes, but he doesn't say a word. His hands ball into fists.  
  
Bucky can feel it, he can feel what he does to Sam. They are more in tune than ever and every angry hiss inside of Sam echoes in Bucky. And yet, Bucky doesn't do anything about it.  
Bucky wants to tell Sam it's not his fault, it's Bucky's, but the words stay inside. Bucky is building walls of unspoken sentences inside of him.  
  
During the nights he stays awake, he loses sleep and weight as he's eating less. Day in day out he wonders whether he made Sam love him.  
He knows he didn't do it, Danielle had reassured him of that once he had found enough courage to ask her, but deep down the feeling has been growing, burning him alive.  
What if none of it is real?  
  
He thinks he’s losing it.  
He-- he-- he can't distinguish what is there and what's not. 

Two different realities are meeting and they cannot co-exist.

Butterflies are everywhere, but they don’t calm Bucky down the way they normally do, they make him anxious.  
He thinks of the stories he has read about butterflies eating corpses. That’s the way they are spread around him and on him.  
He's covered by them all the time, they rest on his face and arms and torso. When he sits down, they crawl over his legs and they won't leave. Why wont' they leave?  
He wants to take them and crush them, but he's afraid what that might onset.

He realises that what he thought were small emperor moths are actually death's-head hawkmoths.  
He knows he's losing it.  
  
He hasn't spoken to Sam in a week and he hasn't been to the meetings of the Underground either. The gang share worried glances at school.  
Both Natasha and Steve tried to talk to him again, he had shut them down immediately.  
  
Sam doesn't look at him at all.  
"I deserve better," he had said a week before, tears escaping him, "you know where to find me. I--"  
  
Pushed to the brink by horror, he goes to Sam, followed by moths instead of butterflies. It's 5 o'clock in the morning of a calm Saturday.  
  
Sam's waiting outside already, another snitching pigeon in his hand, this time Bucky doesn't mind. It isn't supposed to be a surprise.  
Sam looks tired, so very tired. The tried tears of a week ago have remained on his face.  
  
They don't greet each other, they just gaze and before Bucky can say anything, Sam says to him, “what are we, Buck?”  
  
“Together,” Bucky answers immediately. It's 5 in the morning and he's done running. Sam deserves better.

“Are we? Because you've been treating me like shit. I don't know if you remember this, but I don't lie. I made a promise to you, but it's a promise that goes both way, or did you forget?"  


“I was, I mean, I am--," Bucky's voice is high, it sounds as fragile as his body feels, "I'm scared. That I might—“ He swallows the sour bile of fear rising from his throat.

“You used to tell me everything,” Sam says softly, a few new tears escape him.

_No,_ Bucky thinks, _that's the problem. I never did, just told you more than others._

“Sam,” he whispers instead and inhales deeply, “I’m so sorry.”

"I don't want your apologies, Buck," Sam sighs. He doesn't sound like a teenager. He hasn't in quite some time. The late summer on the beach is far far away. "I can see that on your face. I want an explanation."   
  
“What if I make you feel things that aren’t true?”

Sam's eyebrows shoot up. In surprise? Bucky feels panic rising again. What if it’s something Sam has not thought about before?   
  
Sam doesn't answer him, at first, then he says, anger making waves in his voice, jaw clenched, "it feels real to me. In fact, you were the first 'real' thing I've seen in a long time, but then you just fucking left again! Like everyone always does."  
  
Bucky doesn't apologise this time, he knows Sam doesn't want to hear it and he deserves Sam's anger, shouldn't take it away with a mere 'sorry'.  
  
They look at each other in silence and when Bucky breaks the eye-contact, he feels like a burden has been taken away and he wonders why.  
  
"What now, Sam?" he asks.  
  
"Now you will come upstairs with me," Sam answers, leaving no room for contradiction, "and then you will answer some of my questions, truthfully, and who knows what we will have time for later," a small smile plays on his lips, he doesn't hold grudges long, it's a flaw, "today is a Saturday after all."

Bucky steps forward, onto the first step of the stairs in front of Sam's house and kisses the places where Sam's tears weren't wiped away a week ago. He kisses the new spots where Bucky's actions caused Sam's skin to turn salty.  
  
He even softly brushes his lips over Sam's. They are exactly as he remembers,so wonderfully soft and warm, -- Bucky is so in love, why did he give this up, why did he fuck this up-- Sam gives in for a few seconds, letting Bucky overwhelm him, before he pulls back. 

"Talk first, remember?" But Bucky tastes saffron and feels warm again, for a brief moment.

* * *

  
  
As they walk up the stairs, the Wilsons live on the highest floor, Sam explains that his mother is visiting Gideon back in Harlem. No one's home.  
  
They settle on Sam's bed. It's been built into the large window niche in his room. Bucky leans on one wall, while Sam sits against the other.  
  
"Promise you'll tell the truth?"   
  
"I swear," Bucky answers and Sam asks him everything.  
  
Bucky speaks of his fear that he's losing grip on reality, his fear for the future, what might happen to Sam, his fear of what Gideon spoke of, his fear of what Danielle spoke of, his fear of himself and what he might do, his fear of not finishing the school year because they are so focussed on other things. His fear of messing everything up he has with Sam and so he self- sabotages everything before it can even happen.  
  
It turns out, he and Sam are not so different. Sam has his own doubts and fears. Sam worries about their group and the responsibility they have towards them, he wonders whether Bucky feels the same way he does, because Bucky never says anything while Sam shares so much (that's the worst of it all to Bucky, that he made Sam feel like he doesn't love him equally in return).  
  
Sam releases all of his frustrations into the world. "Better to face the bitter truth in the open, than to hold up an illusion in secret," his father used to say.   
  
Near the end of their 'talk,' they are exhausted. Old wounds have been torn open and healed again at the same time.  
They are laying side by side, the bodies breathing as one.  
  
"Is this going to be a thing now, nightly heart to hearts?" Bucky asks. He had forgotten how easy life is when he thrusts Sam, how easy it is to lose something so precious if you lock it up all inside.  
  
"Let's try to do them once in a while during the day," Sam grins.  
  
He moves to his side, facing Bucky who stays on his back. **  
**  
Sam shuffles closer, a bit awkwardly, until he's close enough to move his leg over Bucky's hips. He pushes his face against the side of Bucky's neck and leaves a lingering kiss.  
Bucky turns his head to the side, chasing the kiss, but Sam trails his thumb over Bucky's lips, the thought forgotten already.  
He can feel Sam's affection seep through his finger. He's missed this so much, it's addictive.   
   
They're so close. Bucky lets his gaze trail over Sam's elegant nose, his cheekbones, his brows, the glowing smooth skin. He doesn't think there's anybody more beautiful than Sam on this world.  
Sam kisses him softly, suddenly, this time on his lips and openmouthed. His mouth is warm and supple as he takes more and more of Bucky. He tastes of saffron even then.  
Sam moves his thumb softly over the back of Bucky's neck, the movement makes Bucky's breath hitch, _fuck._  He can't help but completely lean into the touch.  
  
Sam deepens the kiss, even more, growing more insistent, as he uses his hand in Bucky's neck to lift Bucky up to him, licking his way into Bucky's mouth.  
He slowly rolls on top of Bucky. He's in control of everything and Bucky wants him to take the lead, wants to give in  andlet the feeling of Sam on top of him overtake him.  
They are as closely together as two people can, face to face.  
  
With Sam on top, he kisses grow intenser. It's dirty and wet, and Bucky knows he's moaning loudly, but there is no one home and he wants this, he wants Sam so badly and most of all he wants Sam to know what he does to Bucky.  
  
Sam pulls back again, biting softly, nibbling even on Bucky's lower lip. He trails his other hand down Bucky's body and softly brushes his fingers over Bucky's nipple, teasing more sounds out of Bucky. He wonders where Sam picked _that_ up from.  It doesn’t matter, as long as Sam keeps doing it.  
  
Buck eventually slides his hands impatiently under Sam's shirt, over his ribs, to his back, over his wings that are neatly folded there. But he wants to touch Sam's skin, _right now_ and everywhere.  
"T-shirt, off," he gaps out eloquently.  
  
Sam grins. "Okay, Mister Caveman, sir," he mocks.  
He moves up, away from Bucky. A high sound of protest escapes Bucky, that only makes Sam grin wider.  
He pulls the shirt over his head and throws it to the side. His wings loosen themselves slowly, folding away from his body. A beautiful sight, but Bucky pays it no attention as traces and bites kisses over Sam's neck.  
  
"Impatient," Sam comments, but he allows it with a laugh. His wings spread high above, shuddering, betraying the way truly feels behind the facade of control.  
That perhaps turns on Bucky the most. Sam is so fucking gorgeous and turned on and cocky and he knows it, he knows it.  
  
Bucky tries to pull Sam's hips close to his and grind against Sam, he's desperate for it and he knows Sam is hard too, he can feel it through his jeans and they need to be closer _now_.  
And still Sam doesn't give in, only teases him a little by circling his hips against Bucky's.  
Sam tries to pull Bucky's shirt over his head, but it gets stuck behind his elbows and they lose some precious time fighting with Bucky's shirt.  
Once that minor monster has been defeated, Sam pushes him back into the bed. The laughter has died out again, the intensity of stares and touch is back.  
  
From above him, Sam looks at him, studies him. Normally this is when they stop.  
Sam has seen him this naked before, on the beach and at other times, but this time they both know they want to go further.  
So when Sam looks at him it feels different, more intimate. It's terrifying and exciting simultaneously.  
  
Sam bows over him, finally grinding back and _fuck fuck fuck_  it's so much better than Bucky had anticipated. He vaguely notices he's saying _more, more_ into Sam's skin.  
Sam gives in as he gives up on the control. Their two bodies move almost on their own, a little awkwardly and without any rhythm. It's so hot and Bucky feels shivery all over.   
  
To be honest, Bucky hadn't realised that sex involves this much sweat and awkwardness, elbows and knees continuously in the wrong place.  
It also involves a lot more laughter than he thought it would, but he thinks that's mostly Sam.  
  
"Don't be so tense, Buck, it's supposed to be fun."  
  
Sam tickles him, making him giggle, making him let go. And oh, it's so easy to let go with Sam.  
Especially since Sam is finally building up steady rhythm, rubbing their cocks against each other through their jeans, sliding their mouths together.   
  
Bucky supposes they should probably take off their pants, but he's too far gone to make any plans now. He just wants to keep doing it.  
He slides his hands from Sam's back to his hips, to his butt. Even dares to squeeze it. Sam lets out a stuttering breath that turns to sharp pants.  
It encourages Bucky to push Sam against him even harder than before.  
  
Sam's emotions clash in waves following waves on Bucky and he can no longer distinguish them from his own.   
It's almost too intimate, shudders going through Bucky as he and Sam gets closer to a climax.  
He is so fucking hard, and just when he thinks he can't take it anymore, Sam bites his neck softly, and that pushes him over the edge.  
As Bucky cries out, he can feel Sam quickly following him.  
  
For a few minutes they lay still, gasping, only their chest heaving up and down.   
Now they should probably take their pants off, but Bucky hasn't regained any brain capacity to suggest that.  
Instead he smiles and rubs his nose slowly against Sam's neck.  
  
"Well, you didn't faint," Sam comments and Bucky grins.  
  
"We could try again?" And the two of them burst out in another fit of laughter and relief. Bucky's never felt so good in his life.  
  
He moves both his thumbs over Sam's brows, creating a heart shape on the other boy's face before sliding them back to Sam's shoulder blades where his wings begin.  
He kisses Sam softly, slowly, smiling into the kiss. They have all the time in the world.

Later in the morning, Sam crawls out of bed and opens the window. A few birds fly in immediately. There's Redwing, back from his own nightly adventures, and among the other birds there is the familiar white zebra finch Sam had once shown Bucky. "She's yours, if you want her," Sam murmurs into Bucky's neck.  
Not much later they fall asleep again.  
  
Bucky names her Rikki. He loves her little chirps and her curious eyes and the way she rats on him by telling Sam everything he does. He looks at her and knows what he is seeing is real. He isn’t lost in his mind, she becomes his anchor.  
He can never quite put into words what it means to him that Sam gave him something so precious.  
 

* * *

Steve comes up with the idea to use graffiti to "spread the word," as he so eloquently puts it.  
He wants other enhanced people to know they exist, that they aren't alone, without telling people who they are.  
  
The gang likes the idea. Steve shows them some designs, mostly it's drawings of _the Underground_ in those wicked graffiti letters Bucky likes so much.  
However, what Steve eventually ends up doing, takes them all by surprise.  
  
It humbles them deeply.  
They see themselves appearing on the walls of Brooklyn, unrecognisable of course, but in the full glory of their power. There's Steve himself, Toro, Eli, Ororo, Electra, Nico and Molly and many more. There's even one of Natasha. Every painting is unique, original, incredible. Steve has truly outdone himself.  
  
But Bucky loves the one of Sam the most. That shocks no one, least of all Bucky himself.  
Steve has painted it one a huge wall somewhere in Crown Heights.  
  
It shows a tall man, flying, New York at his feet, small and unimportant. This version of Sam has huge wings, they span over the whole wall. They look strong and powerful, too big too hide under a shirt, too beautiful to deserve hiding.  
Sunlight shines behind him, almost blinding the viewer, making the winged man's features unrecognisable. Hundreds of birds and butterflies swarm together in the sky around him.  
  
He looks like an angel.  
  
The first time he had seen it, Bucky couldn't make himself look away. His friends had mocked him for it as he had followed them back to Bushwick with one lingering gaze.  
He comes back often, so he can stare as long as he like. It's mid-spring and he gets some colour back of his cheeks, from being outside so much.  
He's pretty sure Sam knows, when Bucky comes back and showers him with sunwarm kisses.  
  
All the way down in Bay Ridge there's the Bucky portrait.  
He has only seen it once, but he avoids it. He doesn't know why, exactly.  
Maybe because doesn’t quite understand it and he's afraid to ask how Steve came up with it.  
  
It shows a man, appearing from a dark mist. It is the polar opposite of Sam’s, who’s portrait surrounded by light. This Bucky is surrounded by darkness.

It's almost like he's not quite there, that if you close your eyes for a second, he might disappear and you will forever wonder if he was there in the first place.The right side of the shadowy figure is in rags, while the left seems to be carrying a metal arm. The figure is wearing a mask, hiding his face and Bucky's identity.  
  
Some people have called it menacing, he's heard them say it, but Bucky sees only pain in those ever-watching bright grey eyes. They aren’t the blue colour Bucky’s eyes are now.

In Bay Ridge they call the painting 'the Ghost.'

Bucky thinks of Danielle's words.  
  
Bucky knows that Steve’s pieces are interpretative, in this case a way to show how Bucky can influence perceptions. The paintings are meant to inspire emotions, of awe and power of one's gift, but Bucky also knows that Steve sees things that they never talk about. 

That sometimes Steve forbids him to go somewhere, not to join them on a rescue or a guard-shift and he stays behind, because he knows Steve warns him for a reason.

But sometimes the itch to know his future is too stubborn. It’s been under his skin since the first day he met Steve and when he sees the Ghost for the first time, he wants to know what will happen to him.

* * *

  
But Bucky never asks.  
A week after today Sam will turn 17 and Bucky's eyes will turn from icy-blue to completely black to deep dark grey.   
  
It's two weeks after Sam and he first, well, first had sex.  
Bucky is cycling around mindlessly, he had promised Sam to be back soon, but he had wanted to clear his mind.  
He breaks the first rule the Underground has, never to go out alone, but he does, the young fool does.  
If the world had treated him differently, it would have known that Bucky has always been too caring and too courageous for his own good.

When he arrives atLivonia Yard, he dumps his bicycle against one of old subway cars. He walks in the direction of their clubhouse, but he doesn't enter it.   
Instead he goes further into the yard. He likes this place, the contradiction of the abandoned trains in between the ones that remain in use.

He likes that no one ever seems to be there, the only place of peace that Brooklyn offers him. No tourists, no people from Manhattan or people that know him.  
He walks for ten minutes around the yard when something makes him abruptly stop. There's something not quite right and he can feel it crawling up his spine.  
  
Something isn’t quite like it isn’t supposed to be.  
He knows he should turn around, get the others, but his curiosity —or lack of self-preservation really-- takes the better of him.

In the air directly above him moves a shimmer. He can only describe it as that, like there's thin layer separating him and the sky above him.  
It moves when the sun reflects it.  


“What you doing here, kid?”  
Bucky almost jumps out of his skin when the voice interrupts his thoughts.  
  
He sees two men approach, their uniforms shows they are from MTA, but something is wrong with the way they are dressed. Similar to the shimmer the men give Bucky an eery feeling.

He has clearly seen something that he wasn’t supposed to, so he flips the two men the finger and starts running towards his bicycle.  
He knows the yard well, probably better than the two men, but the fact that they might be HYDRA, makes panic set in.

He runs faster and faster, his throat closes up, but the panic gives him the adrenaline that he needs. He should have taken up track with Sam and Steve when he could, he thinks, the thought seems absurd.

One of the men intercepts him midway, closing off the road between two trains that goes directly to the opening where Bucky has dumped his bicycle.  
Bucky makes a quick u-turn and slips between two cars. The fact that the man had a gun in his hand as he shouted to Bucky to stop running definitely proves they are not from MTA.  
  
So Bucky does the only thing he thinks could save him, he makes a beeline towards the bridge.  
  
He runs up to it and sprits over the steps of the stair next to the bridge. They don't go all the way, so hauls himself up, climbing to the top.  
  
The bridge is old. It's made of wood and crosses straight over the main tracks of the subway system to the other side of the yard.  
  
He’s covered in bruises, during the chase some of his clothes are torn but he knows he needs to keep running.  
He doesn’t think he can. The men are closely behind him, he can hear them panting and he's exhausted, his muscles burning.  
He allows himself to take some deep breaths before stumbling further.  
He makes the mistake of looking behind him, the two men following him are already on top and he knows he won't make it to the other side on time, without being shot.  
  
Almost like destiny made it so, he sees a train riding away underneath them and so he does the only thing he can to save his life, he jumps.  
  
  
He falls and falls and falls. He swore to Sam that he would never.

He tastes rust.

With a hard smack he lands on the coals of the freight car. The snap that follows tells him his left arm is broken again, but far worse than before.  
  
He can feel the coals underneath him, they colour his hands black, but it can't be a freight car, he thinks wildly. They're in Brooklyn, for fuck's sake. It must be a subway car. It must be.   
  
He looks up and sees the HYDRA agents standing on the bridge, waiting. They haven’t jump after him.  
They’re not on the train, he thinks hysterically. They’re not on the train!  


He tries to stand up, but he stumbles down, losing his balance. Maybe he broke his leg too, he isn't sure.  
  
With the adrenaline gone, the pain takes over. It's pulsing through his body and he's losing consciousness quickly. 

He desperately tries to keep his eyes open, holding his body still. His arm is on fire, but the rest of his body is turning cold, so cold. He shivers.

He exhales loudly and holds on tightly onto his soul and thinks maybe, maybe, he'll escape. 

He blinks slowly.  
It's getting harder to keep his eyes open.  
  
He thinks he sees Rikki sitting on his chest, he wonders what she's doing here. She looks at him curiously, her small head tilted. _Please_ , he tries to whisper,  _find Sam_.  
She stays with him, he knows she can’t understand him, so he lifts his right-arm slowly, grabbing Rikki and marking the white bird with red and throws her in the air.  
Hoping she understands him now, all thoughts are lost in his mind as the train takes him further away from Brooklyn.

* * *

Dear Bucky,  
Keep me close with all that you find holy and hopeful.  
Remind me that the world is real, with all its dirt and its colours.   
Kiss me and make me believe lost species might come alive again, that I might come alive again. 

* * *

When consciousness returns to him briefly, the train is still moving on the tracks.  
  
His head is thrumming and he is afraid to look to the left and see what has happened to his arm. He keeps his eyes closed shut.  
  
He tries to focus on making another plan of escape, but his mind lingers on Sam.

His Sam.

The deep and unhinged feeling of regret creeps through his body and chokes him.  
He should have kept his promise to Sam not to fall, he should have kept his back-alley promise, he should have listened to Steve not do anything stupid, but he did it anyway, because he was curious and then he was brave.  
  
He finally opens his eyes. At first he thinks that the sky is broken into a million pieces somehow, but then he realises the fractures in sky are moving, buzzing in swarms above him.  
The clouds are made of thousands of butterflies and birds. They loop and swirl and he’s sure he can see a small red-marked white zebra finch among them.  
He would smile, if he could.

They fly as fast as the train is thundering on its tracks and he knows that can’t possibly be true, yet here they are.  
  
Maybe Sam has asked them to come look for him. He knows in his heart they will follow him everywhere, warning others that he is coming.  
  
He lets himself think that Sam and Steve and Toro and Natalia will get to him first before HYDRA does.  


Maybe, they will look back on today and laugh. (Bucky knows that this isn't that kind of day, but still he tells himself otherwise.)   
He'll get to finally swing his arm around Steve without fear, he'll ask Natasha about her parents, tell Toro what he means to Bucky.

Most of all, he thinks of how he'll finally tell Sam that he loves him back, _so much,_ more than anything in this world, and Sam will smile his-no-lie-tooth-gap smile and Bucky will smile too, never to lie again.

* * *

 

Look for the truth in a pattern of lies, then you will understand one's true desire.  
Danielle had taught him that and Bucky knows it when he sees it in himself.  
A contradictio in terminis, a world that cannot exist. But he still tells it to himself, willing himself to believe it.  


He warps the truth of his broken memories and gives himself over to his power. Danielle was right about that too. It's not a gift at all, shaping the world the way you want.  
  
  
He closes his eyes, he feels the cold come back, like it always does when they let him out, pull him apart and put him back again.  
He doesn't mind so much anymore, this way he can return to Sam again.   
Everything is the truth if you believe it strongly enough.  
  
He opens his eyes and walks to school. The small scar on his left arm itches.  
[The sky is low when James Buchanan Barnes changes.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8084434)  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise some of you might find the ending too ambiguous. I wanted a hesitant and unsettling ending since I began to write it, in line with Bucky's characterisation in this story, but I also know that I have my faults as a writer.  
> The ending might leave too many questions unanswered that haven't been worked out entirely, some on purpose, some because the plot in this story just kept growing and growing :)
> 
> \----
> 
> Without (hopefully ;) ) ruining the whole story by leaving a long end note (ignore this if you like), here is some explanation:
> 
> The idea behind the story is that Bucky has (possibly) been lying to us the whole time. This is a recurring theme.  
> He has been changing our perception and the truth of the story, as lies are the only way of expressing himself that he knows and that he has been taught. He does this by telling us a story that might not have happened the way he tells us or perhaps it hasn't happened at all, but instead it's something that Bucky has made up to give himself something of worth while being frozen in cryo under HYDRA'S watch.
> 
> Bucky, after all, is a highly unreliable narrator from the first word on (+ while he's reshaping memories he loses control occasionally as well), due to the way he grew up and sees the world. And he's a teenager, so he dramatises a lot.  
> He relives his story, again and again. This version could be the first time. Therefor it would not be a memory but simply the chronological events as they happened.  
> However, as suggested at the end, perhaps it's the 10th, 100th time he's thought of it after getting out of cryo. (There are some hints to this in the story.) Perhaps every time he does it, he changes it a little bit, takes another mistake away that he made.
> 
> Whether he met Sam at all and if Bucky is telling us the truth of what happened to him, is up to the reader to decide.  
> But then again, does it matter if he's telling the truth? Because if Bucky believes this is what happened, that means it's real to him, right?
> 
> Another reason is that although this was meant to be a stand-alone fic, midway writing this I suddenly had the idea of writing a sequel from Sam's POV. It would take place about 10 years later from this story, taking off when he and Steve are trying to track the Winter Soldier. Therefor I wanted the ending to be more open. I'm working full time so I'm not sure yet and if at all it will be finished.  
> But this is it for now, so thank you all so much for reading. <3 <3


End file.
